🔗 Share this article

An creek so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for over four decades. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own wall was opened, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of residents set about commemorating their history. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely ready. Telling the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel division, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which tore families into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals socializing in the identical tavern, visiting the very same church and placing their young ones to the same learning center.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they took over the complete community, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to retreat across the creek. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as limitations increased they were forced to display ID, although all was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard narratives including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how much wall they desired to maintain. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian edge, near where a villager managed to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the border was heavily fortified.

Conserved Buildings

2 observation towers are conserved in addition to a series of exhibits illustrating the most impactful events in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, the director lists the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Farmers needed particular approval to look after their fields; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but not the pair, for fear that they tried to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but more than two times more people (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They neither backed the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand visited each year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the television series, a television program about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and big car park – is expected to