🔗 Share this article

An stream so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a village for more than four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own division was torn down, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people began memorialising their past. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely prepared. Speaking to the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the very same tavern, attending the same church and sending their young ones to the very same school.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Russians erected timber poles by the creek. For a year they seized the whole village, setting up their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a while, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were obliged to show identification, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could continue to see each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side waving and shouting were banned. One woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for answering “likewise” to a West German local who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his professional career developing it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wanted to maintain. They selected a portion on the west edge, adjacent to where a local resident was able to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of guard towers are conserved in addition to a series of displays illustrating the most significant events in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents required particular approval to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, for fear that they tried to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 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 over two times more persons (well over 300) were killed trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to see annually, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and big vehicle area – is probable to