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Thursday, February 13, 2025
HomeWorldAfricaThe German village cut up by a wall

The German village cut up by a wall

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The small farming neighborhood of Mödlareuth, positioned midway between Berlin and Munich in rural Germany, is residence to round 50 folks and has only one pub. And but it attracts tens of 1000’s of holidaymakers a yr.


Upon arrival, the rationale for that is clear. Among the many 18 homes and farms is a 100m-long strip of a concrete white wall, which was as soon as a part of the previous border between East and West Germany.


Bodily separate from the extra well-known Berlin Wall, the Inside German border was practically 1,400km lengthy and divided East and West Germany from 1949, when the Soviets established East Germany, till the border fortifications began to topple down in 1989.

Mödlareuth lay immediately in its path, which means that in this time, a part of the quiet village was within the socialist east and the opposite within the capitalist west.


The concrete intrusion is now a part of the Mödlareuth Museum, alongside a watchtower, metallic fencing, a reconstruction of the closely fortified barrier and different relics.

The aforementioned pub, opened in 2002, is known as “Zum Grenzgänger” – “the Border Crosser” and the village remains to be often called “Little Berlin”.


Right now, vacationers armed with cameras have taken the place of armed guards.

And whereas guests and locals can now stroll from one facet of the village to the opposite with ease, ignoring the previous warning indicators, they’re, in truth, nonetheless crossing one other, less-visible border: the road between the federal states of Bavaria and Thuringia.


The story of how this village as soon as belonged to 2 contrasting political, financial and social techniques – and the way in which through which the border nonetheless manifests itself as we speak – is a captivating story. One which begins with the native stream.


In 1949, the stream turned a part of the border between the newly fashioned German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany).

It ran from the Baltic Sea, near Lübeck, within the north to the place the northern Bavarian border meets the Czech Republic within the east, carving off the north-eastern nook of Germany as East Germany.


Whereas folks and locations had been divided alongside your complete border, in Mödlareuth it cut up a small neighborhood.

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