🔗 Share this article

An brook so low you barely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for over four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents set about memorialising their past. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely finished. Addressing the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk never stood in the way of the residents gathering in the same tavern, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their young ones to the very same school.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the complete hamlet, creating their control center in a dwelling on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to pull back back over the creek. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to present ID, although everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could continue to see each other by scaling hills, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a western local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wanted to maintain. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are conserved in addition to a series of displays showing the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: nobody could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed special permission to look after their fields; the partner could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, lest they attempted to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but over twice as many persons (more than 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see every year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is probable to