🔗 Share this article

An creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet separated a village for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own division was opened, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people started documenting their past. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the identical tavern, attending the very same place of worship and placing their children to the same school.

Following WWII Division

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they took over the entire community, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as restrictions increased they were forced to present ID, although everyone understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were banned. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a western villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life building it. Residents were asked early on about how how long a section structure they wanted to keep. They chose a stretch on the western fringe, near where a villager was able to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Structures

A pair of guard towers are maintained alongside a set of exhibits illustrating the most significant dates in the community’s past. As we walk, Lebergen lists the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed specific authorization to tend to their fields; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but never both, in case they tried to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Context

The border between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but in excess of twice as many individuals (well over 300) were killed trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. About 15,000 came to see every year, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Modern Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and large car park – is likely to