🔗 Share this article

A brook so low you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was opened, and before their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people began memorialising their past. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the residents gathering in the identical tavern, going to the identical place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russians erected wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they occupied the whole hamlet, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a while, villagers could continue to cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to show identity papers, although each person was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career creating it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how much barrier they desired to keep. They selected a portion on the western edge, near where one of their own was able to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the border was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

2 observation towers are maintained in addition to a series of exhibits depicting the most significant events in the village’s past. As we walk, the director details the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers required specific authorization to look after their produce; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but never both, lest they attempted to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Background

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but more than twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) died seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They neither backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of destination. Approximately 15k came to visit annually, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, the television series, a television program about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Present-Day Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is likely to