🔗 Share this article

An brook so shallow you hardly got your feet wet split a village for in excess of four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents started commemorating their history. The project is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Speaking to the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which ripped households into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Historical Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals gathering in the identical tavern, going to the very same place of worship and sending their children to the same learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they came, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the brook. For a year they occupied the complete village, establishing their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a time, locals could continue to hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to display identification, even though each person was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side waving and calling out were prohibited. One woman was added to a Stasi monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a western local who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his professional career creating it. Villagers were consulted early on about how what length of barrier they wanted to maintain. They opted for a portion on the western perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own managed to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was substantially fortified.

Conserved Structures

2 guard towers are maintained in addition to a series of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic dates in the village’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain special permission to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but never the two, lest they tried to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Context

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many persons (more than 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They did not backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand visited each year, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, film screening area and big parking lot – is likely to