🔗 Share this article

An stream so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a settlement for more than four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own division was breached, and prior to their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people started documenting their heritage. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely ready. Speaking to the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped households apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the very same tavern, going to the identical church and sending their young ones to the very same educational institution.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the whole village, setting up their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to withdraw back over the stream. For a period, residents could continue to jump across, though as controls became stricter they were forced to show identity papers, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side waving and shouting were banned. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a western resident who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his professional career creating it. Locals were consulted early on about how much structure they desired to keep. They selected a stretch on the western edge, close to where one of their own managed to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Structures

2 watchtowers are conserved together with a collection of tableaux illustrating the most impactful events in the community’s history. As we walk, the director lists the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents required special permission to tend to their fields; the partner could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, lest they sought to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but more than two times more individuals (well over 300) were killed trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They did not backed the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit annually, binoculars in hand, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is expected to