🔗 Share this article

An brook so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a village for over four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own wall was breached, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents started memorialising their past. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the path of the locals drinking in the very same tavern, visiting the very same religious building and placing their kids to the identical school.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the complete hamlet, establishing their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to pull back back over the brook. For a period, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to display ID, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were banned. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a West German local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his working life creating it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They opted for a section on the Bavarian fringe, near where a local resident succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of observation towers are preserved together with a collection of tableaux depicting the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Farmers needed special permission to look after their fields; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but not the two, in case they tried to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but over two times more individuals (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 came to see each year, binoculars in hand, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and large vehicle area – is probable to