🔗 Share this article

An brook so low you hardly got your feet wet separated a village for in excess of four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own wall was breached, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents began memorialising their heritage. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely finished. Speaking to the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel division, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Historical Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the locals gathering in the very same pub, visiting the identical place of worship and placing their children to the very same school.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the second world war. As soon as they came, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the brook. For a year they took over the whole village, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a time, residents could continue to jump across, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to show identity papers, even though each person knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could continue to view each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was added to a Stasi watch list for replying “back at you” to a West German resident who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his professional career creating it. Residents were consulted early on about how how long a section structure they wanted to keep. They selected a section on the Bavarian fringe, near where one of their own succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are maintained in addition to a set of tableaux depicting the most impactful moments in the community’s chronicle. As we walk, the director enumerates the rules: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed specific authorization to care for their produce; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, lest they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Context

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but over twice as many individuals (more than 300) died trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a type of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit each year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Modern Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, film screening area and large car park – is probable to