🔗 Share this article

A stream so narrow you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for over four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own wall was opened, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people began commemorating their past. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel split, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which pulled households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the residents gathering in the very same tavern, going to the very same church and enrolling their kids to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they came, the Russians installed wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the complete hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a while, residents could still cross over, though as limitations increased they were obliged to display identity papers, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the east side signaling and shouting were prohibited. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

I heard stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his occupational time creating it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how what length of structure they desired to keep. They selected a portion on the west fringe, close to where a local resident managed to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Installations

Two observation towers are preserved together with a series of tableaux depicting the most significant moments in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, the director details the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers required special permission to tend to their fields; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but never the pair, lest they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but in excess of two times more individuals (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. About 15,000 came to see every year, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a television program about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and big vehicle area – is expected to