🔗 Share this article

A stream so shallow you barely got your ankles wet divided a community for over four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, fields and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own division was opened, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people set about memorialising their history. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Telling the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the locals gathering in the very same pub, visiting the very same church and placing their kids to the identical learning center.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they came, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the complete village, creating their control center in a dwelling on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to pull back across the brook. For a period, residents could continue to jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to display ID, although all was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were banned. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a West German local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life developing it. Locals were consulted early on about how what length of structure they desired to preserve. They selected a portion on the west fringe, near where a local resident succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Installations

2 guard towers are conserved alongside a set of displays depicting the most significant dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, the director enumerates the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required special permission to look after their fields; the partner could work the harvesting machine but not both, lest they attempted to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but in excess of two times more people (well over 300) died trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the grey zone between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, the director explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of site of interest. Roughly 15k visited every year, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, store, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is likely to