🔗 Share this article

An stream so low you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades of time. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span 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. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about memorialising their history. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which tore households asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

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

Bygone Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the locals socializing in the very same pub, attending the same church and sending their young ones to the identical school.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians put up wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the entire hamlet, creating their command in a building on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to withdraw across the stream. For a period, villagers could continue to cross over, though as limitations increased they were required to show ID, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were asked early on about how how long a section structure they wished to keep. They opted for a portion on the west fringe, close to where a local resident was able to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was substantially fortified.

Maintained Buildings

2 observation towers are conserved in addition to a series of tableaux showing the most impactful events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, the director lists the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed special permission to care for their crops; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but not both, in case they sought to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but over two times more persons (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between two political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They did not backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of destination. About fifteen thousand visited every year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and sizable car park – is probable to