🔗 Share this article

An brook so low you barely got your feet wet divided a settlement for more than four decades. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents began documenting their past. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely finished. Speaking to the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore families apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the same tavern, visiting the same place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the very same learning center.

Post-War Division

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the brook. For a year they took over the whole community, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to pull back across the creek. For a period, residents could continue to hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to show identity papers, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were banned. A local woman was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a western local who said her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his professional career building it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wanted to keep. They opted for a section on the western edge, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Structures

Two guard towers are preserved together with a series of tableaux illustrating the most impactful moments in the village’s history. As we walk, Lebergen details the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents needed special permission to care for their produce; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but never both, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but over two times more people (well over 300) died seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. the director tells me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They did not endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. Approximately 15,000 came to visit every year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and sizable car park – is probable to