🔗 Share this article

A stream so low you barely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own division was torn down, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers began documenting their past. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely ready. Telling the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the locals socializing in the identical pub, going to the same place of worship and placing their young ones to the identical learning center.

After the War Division

Then came the second world war. As soon as they came, the Russians erected wooden posts by the stream. For a year they seized the complete village, creating their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to retreat across the stream. For a period, residents could continue to hop over, though as restrictions increased they were required to show ID, although everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to view each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life building it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how what length of barrier they desired to preserve. They chose a stretch on the western edge, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Structures

2 guard towers are conserved together with a series of tableaux depicting the most significant events in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, the director details the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required special permission to look after their fields; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but not the two, for fear that they sought to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but over twice as many people (exceeding 300) died trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Village Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They neither supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to see each year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is expected to