🔗 Share this article

A brook so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet split a community for in excess of four decades. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents began memorialising their heritage. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Addressing the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the residents drinking in the same pub, going to the same religious building and sending their young ones to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the complete hamlet, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to pull back back over the stream. For a time, residents could continue to hop over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to present identity papers, although each person understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could still see each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side waving and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a West German villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his working life building it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how much barrier they desired to keep. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own was able to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Installations

Two observation towers are conserved alongside a series of exhibits depicting the most impactful events in the community’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required special permission to tend to their produce; the partner could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, in case they tried to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but over two times more people (well over 300) died attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They neither supported the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. About 15,000 came to see annually, binoculars in hand, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is expected to