🔗 Share this article

An stream so narrow you barely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about memorialising their history. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely ready. Speaking to the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk did not stand in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the same inn, attending the same religious building and placing their kids to the same learning center.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they appeared, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the brook. For a year they took over the whole village, setting up their control center in a building on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to withdraw across the stream. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to present identification, although each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a West German villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his working life developing it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wished to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the west perimeter, near where one of their own was able to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are preserved together with a series of exhibits showing the most impactful dates in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain special permission to look after their fields; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, lest they attempted to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Background

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but over twice as many individuals (well over 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They neither backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. About 15,000 visited each year, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and large car park – is likely to