🔗 Share this article

An stream so low you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for over four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own division was opened, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of local people set about memorialising their history. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal division, which tore families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Context

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the residents socializing in the identical pub, going to the same place of worship and sending their kids to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Then came the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Russians put up wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they took over the whole village, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back across the brook. For a time, villagers could still jump across, though as restrictions increased they were required to display identification, although everyone knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a West German local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I was told stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his professional career developing it. Locals were polled early on about how what length of wall they wanted to maintain. They chose a section on the western fringe, adjacent to where a local resident managed to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was significantly fortified.

Conserved Structures

2 observation towers are conserved in addition to a collection of displays showing the most impactful events in the village’s history. As we stroll, the director details the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers required specific authorization to care for their produce; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, in case they attempted to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but more than double the number people (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15k visited annually, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and big parking lot – is likely to