🔗 Share this article

A creek so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a community for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own division was breached, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about memorialising their heritage. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Addressing the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal division, which ripped households apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which ripped households apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the very same pub, visiting the very same religious building and placing their children to the same learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they seized the complete village, setting up their command in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to withdraw across the brook. For a while, locals could continue to jump across, though as controls became stricter they were forced to display identification, even though all knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still see each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were banned. A local woman was put on a Stasi watch list for replying “back at you” to a western villager who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his working life developing it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they wished to preserve. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the border was significantly fortified.

Conserved Buildings

2 guard towers are conserved alongside a set of displays illustrating the most impactful events in the village’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Farmers required particular approval to care for their produce; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but never both, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Background

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but in excess of twice as many people (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Village Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to see annually, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Current Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is expected to