🔗 Share this article

A creek so low you hardly got your ankles wet separated a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own division was breached, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents set about memorialising their past. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely ready. Telling the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which ripped households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk did not stand in the path of the residents gathering in the same tavern, visiting the same religious building and placing their young ones to the very same school.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they came, the Russians put up wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the whole community, establishing their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to pull back back over the creek. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to present ID, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a Stasi watch list for responding “likewise” to a western villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career building it. Villagers were polled early on about how how long a section wall they wanted to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the west fringe, near where one of their own succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Conserved Buildings

2 observation towers are conserved together with a set of displays illustrating the most significant dates in the community’s history. As we move, the director enumerates the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain special permission to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, in case they attempted to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Background

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but over two times more individuals (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. About fifteen thousand visited annually, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, store, movie theater and sizable vehicle area – is expected to