Mödlareuth border museum

Mödlareuth border museum - darkometer rating : 5 - ----------------------------- UPDATE: a new museum building at this site has opened on 9 November 2025. I guess I'll have to go on a revisit to check this out at some point. Please bear with me ... ----------------------------- One of the border museums and memorials along the former Iron Curtain that in Germany divided East ( GDR ) and West ( FRG ) during most of the Cold War era – here in fact more visibly than almost anywhere else. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: What's special about Mödlareuth is the fact that here the border sliced right through the small village, one part of it belonging to Bavaria the other to Thuringia. When after WWII the Allies used old administrative borders to set up their respective zones of occupation, this formerly harmless bureaucratic border became part of the heavily fortified Iron Curtain separating the West (in this case the US zone) from the Eastern Bloc . And since the territory of this tiny (double) village was so small, the GDR border fortifications took more or less the same form as they did in Berlin (see Berlin Wall ), hence Mödlrareuth's nickname "Little Berlin". Unlike in Berlin, however, there were no border crossings/checkpoints at Mödlareuth – so for 37 years it was impossible to get from one part of the village to the other. Even waving at the former fellow villagers in the West was forbidden in the East. As the border was considered particularly sensitive here, the GDR authorities forcibly resettled some villagers who were regarded as "unreliable" and even a building that stood right by the border line was demolished.