🔗 Share this article

A stream so low you hardly got your feet wet divided a community for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own wall was breached, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people began commemorating their history. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely ready. Addressing the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the residents socializing in the same tavern, visiting the identical religious building and sending their children to the identical learning center.

After the War Division

Then came the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Russians put up wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the whole community, establishing their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to pull back back over the brook. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as controls increased they were obliged to present identification, even though all was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could continue to observe each other by climbing hills, but on the east side waving and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a western local who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his working life building it. Locals were asked early on about how what length of wall they wanted to preserve. They chose a portion on the west fringe, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the border was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Structures

2 observation towers are conserved in addition to a set of displays showing the most dramatic moments in the village’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed particular approval to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but not the two, in case they attempted to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but more than twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They did not supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15k came to see every year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is expected to