🔗 Share this article

A brook so shallow you barely got your feet wet divided a community for more than four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own wall was breached, and before their country had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers began commemorating their history. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Telling the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which tore households asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the very same tavern, going to the very same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the identical school.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the stream. For a year they seized the whole hamlet, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back across the stream. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were required to display identity papers, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a western villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wanted to preserve. They chose a portion on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a local resident managed to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Installations

2 watchtowers are preserved in addition to a series of tableaux showing the most significant moments in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Lebergen lists the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required specific authorization to tend to their crops; the partner could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they attempted to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but more than double the number individuals (more than 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. About 15,000 visited each year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the television series, a television program about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and sizable car park – is likely to