🔗 Share this article

An creek so low you hardly got your feet wet split a community for over four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people set about memorialising their heritage. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Telling the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel split, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an cruel separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the residents gathering in the very same tavern, attending the identical place of worship and placing their young ones to the identical school.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the brook. For a year they took over the complete village, setting up their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to retreat across the brook. For a period, residents could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were obliged to show identity papers, even though each person understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were banned. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a western resident who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how much wall they wanted to preserve. They selected a stretch on the western fringe, close to where a villager succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Installations

A pair of guard towers are preserved together with a set of displays illustrating the most dramatic dates in the village’s history. As we walk, the director lists the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to look after their fields; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but not the two, lest they attempted to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but in excess of two times more persons (well over 300) were killed seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. Roughly 15k came to visit annually, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is expected to