🔗 Share this article

An stream so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own division was opened, and prior to their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of residents started documenting their past. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Speaking to the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel division, which tore families apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Past Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for giving all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the identical inn, attending the very same place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the identical school.

After the War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Russians erected timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they took over the complete community, setting up their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to retreat across the brook. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were forced to show ID, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could continue to view each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was put on a Stasi watch list for answering “likewise” to a western villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his working life creating it. Villagers were asked early on about how how long a section barrier they wished to maintain. They selected a stretch on the west fringe, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the border was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are preserved together with a series of displays depicting the most dramatic events in the village’s past. As we stroll, the director details the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to look after their produce; the partner could operate the combine harvester but never the pair, lest they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The border between West Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but more than double the number individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between two political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. Roughly 15,000 came to visit each year, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and large parking lot – is probable to