🔗 Share this article

An stream so low you hardly got your feet wet split a settlement for more than four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own wall was opened, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents began commemorating their history. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Past Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the very same pub, going to the very same church and placing their children to the identical educational institution.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the entire hamlet, creating their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to withdraw across the creek. For a while, villagers could continue to cross over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to display identification, although each person knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could continue to view each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “likewise” to a West German local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career creating it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wanted to keep. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, near where one of their own managed to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Installations

A pair of observation towers are maintained alongside a set of exhibits showing the most significant dates in the village’s history. As we walk, the director enumerates the rules: no one could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required particular approval to care for their crops; the partner could use the harvesting machine but never both, in case they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Context

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but more than twice as many people (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit annually, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Current Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and sizable car park – is likely to