🔗 Share this article

A brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a village for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a group of residents began commemorating their history. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel division, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the way of the locals gathering in the very same pub, attending the same church and enrolling their children to the identical educational institution.

After the War Separation

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russians erected wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the entire hamlet, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to withdraw across the brook. For a period, residents could continue to cross over, though as limitations increased they were required to display identity papers, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could continue to see each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were forbidden. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a West German villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his occupational time creating it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how much wall they wished to preserve. They chose a stretch on the west edge, near where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the border was significantly fortified.

Maintained Structures

A pair of watchtowers are maintained in addition to a set of tableaux illustrating the most impactful dates in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, the director details the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers had to obtain special permission to tend to their produce; the partner could operate the agricultural equipment but never both, lest they tried to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of double the number persons (more than 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k visited every year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and big parking lot – is probable to