🔗 Share this article

A creek so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet split a settlement for over four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people began commemorating their past. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Past Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the way of the locals gathering in the same pub, visiting the same religious building and sending their young ones to the identical learning center.

After the War Division

Then came the global conflict. The moment they came, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they seized the whole community, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a while, locals could continue to jump across, though as limitations tightened they were required to display identification, even though each person was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could continue to see each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his professional career building it. Residents were consulted early on about how much barrier they wished to keep. They opted for a section on the western perimeter, close to where a local resident was able to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the border was significantly fortified.

Maintained Structures

Two guard towers are conserved together with a collection of displays illustrating the most significant moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain special permission to look after their fields; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but never both, lest they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Context

The border between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but over two times more persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. About 15,000 came to visit every year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is likely to