🔗 Share this article

A brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a village for more than four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. 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 established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of local people started documenting their heritage. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely finished. Addressing the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the same pub, visiting the very same place of worship and placing their children to the identical school.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the brook. For a year they seized the entire village, setting up their command in a building on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a period, locals could still jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to display identification, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was added to a Stasi monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Locals were consulted early on about how how long a section structure they wished to preserve. They selected a section on the western edge, near where one of their own succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

2 guard towers are maintained in addition to a set of exhibits illustrating the most impactful dates in the community’s history. As we move, the director details the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents needed special permission to look after their fields; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, in case they tried to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but over twice as many individuals (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between two political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. Roughly 15k came to see annually, binoculars in hand, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Present-Day Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is probable to