🔗 Share this article

An stream so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a village for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own wall was breached, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers set about documenting their heritage. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not completely prepared. Telling the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which pulled families into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Historical Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the path of the residents gathering in the identical inn, attending the same religious building and placing their kids to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they seized the complete community, creating their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw across the stream. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as controls increased they were forced to display identity papers, even though each person was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side signaling and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was put on a Stasi watch list for replying “likewise” to a Bavarian local who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career creating it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wanted to maintain. They selected a portion on the Bavarian fringe, near where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Conserved Installations

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a collection of displays showing the most dramatic events in the community’s past. As we move, the director details the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers required specific authorization to tend to their fields; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but never the pair, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but more than twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to visit each year, optical devices in possession, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, film screening area and large parking lot – is likely to