🔗 Share this article

A creek so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for over four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own division was breached, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents began documenting their history. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the locals drinking in the very same tavern, going to the very same place of worship and placing their kids to the very same school.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the complete community, creating their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a time, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations increased they were forced to present identity papers, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a West German villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his working life creating it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wished to keep. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the border was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

Two observation towers are preserved alongside a set of displays depicting the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, the director details the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents required particular approval to tend to their fields; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but not the two, in case they attempted to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Background

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but in excess of double the number persons (more than 300) were killed trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between two political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They neither supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a type of site of interest. Approximately 15k came to see every year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, film screening area and big car park – is probable to