🔗 Share this article

An stream so low you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for more than four decades. By an accident of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers began memorialising their history. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which ripped relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which ripped households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the residents socializing in the same inn, going to the very same place of worship and placing their children to the very same school.

Post-War Division

Then came the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Russians installed wood stakes by the creek. For a year they seized the complete community, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to withdraw back over the brook. For a while, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to present identification, even though each person knew who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were banned. A female resident was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a western resident who said her “good new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his occupational time creating it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wanted to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian edge, close to where a villager succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Conserved Installations

Two observation towers are preserved alongside a collection of displays showing the most significant events in the village’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed particular approval to look after their produce; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but never the pair, lest they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but over double the number people (exceeding 300) died seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of site of interest. About 15,000 came to see each year, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is likely to