🔗 Share this article

A creek so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a community for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of local people started documenting their heritage. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Speaking to the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal split, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the locals drinking in the very same pub, going to the very same place of worship and enrolling their children to the identical school.

Following WWII Split

Then came the second world war. As soon as they came, the Russians erected wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the entire hamlet, creating their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a time, residents could continue to jump across, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to present identity papers, even though each person understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a West German resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I heard accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his occupational time creating it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how what length of wall they wanted to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the west fringe, close to where a local resident was able to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Maintained Structures

2 guard towers are conserved alongside a set of exhibits showing the most impactful moments in the community’s past. As we move, the director lists the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to tend to their crops; the partner could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Background

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but over two times more persons (more than 300) died attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to see annually, binoculars in hand, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, movie theater and large car park – is probable to