🔗 Share this article

A creek so narrow you hardly got your feet wet split a settlement for more than four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents began documenting their history. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Telling the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the locals drinking in the very same tavern, going to the very same church and sending their children to the same school.

Post-War Split

Then came the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the brook. For a year they took over the entire village, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to retreat back over the stream. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations tightened they were forced to show identification, even though each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his occupational time creating it. Locals were consulted early on about how much barrier they desired to keep. They chose a portion on the west fringe, near where one of their own was able to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Maintained Buildings

2 watchtowers are maintained together with a set of displays illustrating the most impactful dates in the community’s past. As we walk, the director details the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to look after their fields; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, in case they attempted to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but in excess of double the number individuals (well over 300) died seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 visited annually, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Current Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is likely to