🔗 Share this article

An creek so low you barely got your ankles wet divided a village for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own division was opened, and before their state had become one in 1990, a group of residents set about memorialising their heritage. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely ready. Telling the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity never stood in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the identical tavern, visiting the very same church and placing their children to the same learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they came, the Russians installed wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the entire village, creating their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw across the brook. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were forced to show identity papers, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wished to maintain. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, near where a local resident succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the border was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Installations

2 guard towers are maintained in addition to a set of displays depicting the most dramatic dates in the village’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed special permission to look after their crops; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but not both, for fear that they sought to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but more than two times more individuals (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They did not backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. About 15k came to see each year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and big car park – is expected to