🔗 Share this article

An brook so low you barely got your feet wet split a community for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers began memorialising their past. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Speaking to the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel division, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the identical pub, going to the very same church and placing their kids to the same school.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russians put up timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the complete village, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw back over the stream. For a time, locals could continue to hop over, though as limitations increased they were forced to present ID, even though all knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were banned. A local woman was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian local who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career developing it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wanted to preserve. They chose a stretch on the west perimeter, close to where a local resident succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was significantly fortified.

Conserved Installations

2 guard towers are preserved together with a collection of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic dates in the community’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers required special permission to tend to their crops; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but never the two, in case they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but over two times more people (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see annually, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and large vehicle area – is expected to