🔗 Share this article

An creek so low you barely got your feet wet split a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of local people began memorialising their heritage. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Telling the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which tore households asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the residents socializing in the identical pub, going to the identical church and sending their children to the same school.

After the War Division

Then came the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the entire community, establishing their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a period, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations tightened they were required to show identification, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could continue to view each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were banned. A female resident was put on a Stasi watch list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life building it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how much structure they wanted to preserve. They selected a section on the Bavarian edge, near where a villager managed to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Structures

2 watchtowers are preserved together with a series of displays illustrating the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, the director enumerates the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required particular approval to look after their fields; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but never both, for fear that they tried to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Background

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but more than double the number persons (more than 300) were killed seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Approximately 15,000 visited annually, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and big parking lot – is probable to