🔗 Share this article

A stream so low you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents started commemorating their heritage. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Addressing the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals drinking in the same inn, attending the same place of worship and placing their young ones to the very same learning center.

After the War Split

Then came the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russians erected timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they seized the complete hamlet, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to pull back across the brook. For a period, locals could continue to cross over, though as controls tightened they were required to display identification, although everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time building it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they desired to keep. They selected a stretch on the western fringe, adjacent to where a local resident was able to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the boundary was significantly fortified.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of guard towers are conserved together with a set of exhibits showing the most impactful events in the community’s chronicle. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required special permission to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, in case they tried to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but in excess of double the number people (well over 300) were killed seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 visited annually, binoculars in hand, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Modern Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, movie theater and big parking lot – is likely to