🔗 Share this article

An stream so low you hardly got your ankles wet split a community for over four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of residents started documenting their history. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely finished. Telling the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk never stood in the way of the residents drinking in the very same pub, visiting the very same place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the identical school.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians installed timber poles by the brook. For a year they seized the complete hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to pull back back over the creek. For a while, residents could still cross over, though as limitations increased they were required to show identity papers, even though everyone knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could continue to see each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. One woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a western resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his professional career building it. Villagers were asked at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they wished to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the west fringe, near where a local resident managed to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Structures

2 observation towers are maintained alongside a collection of displays illustrating the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, the director lists the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to look after their produce; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not the two, lest they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Background

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but more than two times more persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit annually, optical devices in hand, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Current Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, film screening area and large vehicle area – is probable to