🔗 Share this article

A stream so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own division was breached, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people set about documenting their past. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Addressing the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the way of the locals gathering in the very same tavern, visiting the same church and placing their children to the identical school.

Post-War Separation

Then came the second world war. The moment they came, the Russians put up wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the entire village, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to pull back back over the brook. For a period, villagers could continue to hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to present ID, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to see each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a West German resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his occupational time building it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how what length of structure they wanted to keep. They opted for a section on the west edge, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a series of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic dates in the village’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen lists the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required particular approval to look after their fields; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but never the pair, for fear that they attempted to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but more than twice as many individuals (more than 300) died trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They neither supported the socialist government nor opposed it, the director states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. Approximately 15k visited annually, binoculars in possession, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Current Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and large vehicle area – is likely to