🔗 Share this article

A brook so shallow you hardly got your feet wet separated a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own division was breached, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents set about documenting their past. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Addressing the residents who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the residents gathering in the identical inn, going to the very same church and sending their kids to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the complete village, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to withdraw across the brook. For a while, residents could continue to hop over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to show ID, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could continue to see each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a West German resident who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

I heard accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his occupational time creating it. Locals were consulted early on about how much barrier they wished to keep. They chose a portion on the west fringe, adjacent to where one of their own managed to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Structures

Two watchtowers are preserved alongside a series of displays depicting the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, the director details the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but never both, in case they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but over twice as many people (exceeding 300) died attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They neither supported the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit annually, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and sizable vehicle area – is likely to