🔗 Share this article

An creek so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a community for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own division was breached, and before their country had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers started memorialising their history. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely finished. Telling the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

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

Historical Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the path of the locals socializing in the same inn, going to the identical religious building and sending their children to the identical school.

After the War Split

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they took over the entire hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to withdraw across the stream. For a while, residents could still cross over, though as controls increased they were forced to present ID, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were banned. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a western resident who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time developing it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how much wall they wanted to keep. They selected a section on the western edge, near where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the border was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

2 observation towers are maintained alongside a series of displays showing the most significant moments in the village’s history. As we move, Lebergen lists the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain special permission to look after their crops; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but not the pair, in case they sought to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but more than two times more people (more than 300) died trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They did not backed the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. Approximately 15,000 came to see each year, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Current Evolutions

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