🔗 Share this article

An brook so low you scarcely got your ankles wet split a village for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own wall was opened, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents started memorialising their past. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Speaking to the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped families apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for giving all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals drinking in the identical inn, going to the identical religious building and sending their children to the very same learning center.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the whole community, establishing their headquarters in a building on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a period, residents could still jump across, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to present identification, although each person was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was built, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a West German villager who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how what length of wall they desired to maintain. They selected a stretch on the west edge, close to where one of their own managed to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

Two guard towers are maintained alongside a set of tableaux depicting the most impactful moments in the community’s history. As we move, the director lists the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed particular approval to look after their crops; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but not the pair, for fear that they sought to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Context

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many persons (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, the director states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of destination. About 15,000 visited each year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and sizable car park – is likely to