🔗 Share this article

A creek so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own division was breached, and before their country had become one in 1990, a collection of local people set about memorialising their history. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk never stood in the way of the residents drinking in the identical pub, visiting the identical church and enrolling their kids to the very same school.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the complete hamlet, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat back over the brook. For a period, villagers could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were forced to present ID, although each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was put on a Stasi watch list for replying “same to you” to a western villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his working life developing it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how what length of wall they wished to preserve. They chose a portion on the western edge, near where a villager managed to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was substantially fortified.

Maintained Structures

A pair of observation towers are maintained in addition to a set of tableaux showing the most significant moments in the hamlet’s past. As we move, the director enumerates the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to care for their fields; the partner could operate the combine harvester but not the pair, in case they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but more than twice as many persons (well over 300) died seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Roughly 15k came to see every year, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is probable to