🔗 Share this article

An stream so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a village for over four decades. By an accident of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about commemorating their heritage. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Speaking to the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which pulled households apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals drinking in the very same inn, attending the same church and placing their kids to the very same school.

After the War Division

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians installed wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the complete village, establishing their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to pull back across the stream. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to show identity papers, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were banned. A local woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a western resident who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how much barrier they wanted to maintain. They chose a stretch on the western edge, close to where one of their own managed to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Structures

Two observation towers are maintained alongside a collection of exhibits showing the most significant dates in the community’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain special permission to look after their produce; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not the two, in case they tried to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but more than twice as many people (more than 300) died trying to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They neither supported the socialist government nor resisted it, the director explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k visited annually, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Current Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and large parking lot – is likely to