🔗 Share this article

An brook so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a community for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own division was breached, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a group of villagers set about commemorating their history. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel split, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which ripped families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the very same inn, going to the identical church and sending their children to the identical school.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the whole village, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a while, residents could continue to cross over, though as restrictions increased they were required to display identification, although all was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “back at you” to a West German resident who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Residents were consulted early on about how how long a section wall they wanted to preserve. They chose a portion on the western perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own managed to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of observation towers are preserved alongside a set of exhibits depicting the most dramatic events in the community’s history. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their fields; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but not the two, for fear that they tried to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but over twice as many persons (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They did not backed the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. About 15,000 came to visit each year, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and sizable car park – is expected to