🔗 Share this article

An stream so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a village for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own division was opened, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents started memorialising their past. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Addressing the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal split, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity never stood in the path of the locals gathering in the same pub, attending the identical place of worship and placing their kids to the same learning center.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the whole village, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to retreat back over the creek. For a while, locals could continue to hop over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to present identification, even though everyone understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who said her “good new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his working life developing it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how much barrier they desired to maintain. They opted for a section on the west edge, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Installations

Two watchtowers are conserved together with a collection of exhibits depicting the most significant moments in the village’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required special permission to look after their produce; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, in case they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Background

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but in excess of two times more people (well over 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. About 15k came to visit each year, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and big parking lot – is expected to