🔗 Share this article

A stream so low you scarcely got your ankles wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people began documenting their heritage. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely ready. Speaking to the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which tore households apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped households apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Context

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the identical pub, going to the same religious building and sending their children to the same learning center.

After the War Separation

Then came the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they took over the complete village, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back back over the creek. For a while, locals could still cross over, though as controls became stricter they were forced to display ID, although everyone knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were banned. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “likewise” to a West German villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his occupational time building it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how much structure they wanted to keep. They opted for a portion on the western fringe, close to where a villager succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of observation towers are preserved together with a set of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their produce; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but not the two, for fear that they sought to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but more than twice as many individuals (more than 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of destination. About 15k came to see annually, binoculars in hand, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and big car park – is expected to