🔗 Share this article

A creek so low you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for more than four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own division was torn down, and prior to their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents started memorialising their history. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal split, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the identical tavern, visiting the very same religious building and placing their young ones to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the whole village, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a period, locals could continue to hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to display identity papers, although all knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were banned. A female resident was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how how long a section structure they desired to preserve. They selected a portion on the western edge, near where a local resident was able to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Maintained Structures

A pair of observation towers are conserved in addition to a series of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required particular approval to tend to their fields; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they tried to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but in excess of twice as many people (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of destination. About 15,000 came to visit each year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, movie theater and big vehicle area – is expected to