🔗 Share this article

A stream so low you scarcely got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own division was opened, and before their country had become one in 1990, a group of villagers started memorialising their past. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal split, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the identical tavern, visiting the identical religious building and enrolling their kids to the identical school.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they took over the complete hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to present identity papers, although all knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could continue to see each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for replying “back at you” to a western resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career building it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they desired to keep. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a villager succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the border was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Structures

A pair of observation towers are conserved in addition to a collection of displays depicting the most dramatic moments in the village’s chronicle. As we move, the director details the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to tend to their crops; the partner could work the combine harvester but not the pair, for fear that they sought to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Background

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but more than twice as many individuals (well over 300) died attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between two political systems by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They did not supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see annually, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, movie theater and large vehicle area – is probable to