🔗 Share this article

An brook so low you scarcely got your feet wet split a village for over four decades. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own wall was torn down, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about commemorating their past. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely finished. Speaking to the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which tore families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled households asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the way of the residents socializing in the same pub, going to the same religious building and enrolling their kids to the same learning center.

After the War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Russians put up wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the whole hamlet, setting up their command in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a while, villagers could continue to cross over, though as limitations increased they were required to present identity papers, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were forbidden. One woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for answering “likewise” to a West German local who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his working life developing it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how what length of wall they wished to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the western edge, near where a local resident was able to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are conserved alongside a series of displays illustrating the most impactful events in the village’s past. As we walk, the director details the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers required particular approval to tend to their crops; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but not both, for fear that they attempted to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but in excess of two times more individuals (exceeding 300) were killed trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They neither supported the socialist government nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a type of destination. Roughly 15k came to see every year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Modern Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and large car park – is probable to