🔗 Share this article

An creek so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a village for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people started memorialising their past. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely ready. Telling the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk never stood in the path of the residents socializing in the same inn, going to the same church and placing their kids to the same learning center.

Post-War Split

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians erected wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they took over the entire community, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat back over the brook. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to display identity papers, even though each person understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could continue to observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were banned. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “same to you” to a West German local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his professional career building it. Residents were polled early on about how how long a section barrier they wished to preserve. They chose a stretch on the western edge, adjacent to where a local resident was able to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

Two observation towers are preserved in addition to a set of exhibits showing the most dramatic moments in the community’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to care for their produce; the partner could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, lest they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but more than double the number individuals (exceeding 300) died trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the grey zone between two political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About 15k came to see each year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and large car park – is expected to