🔗 Share this article

A brook so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was opened, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents began memorialising their past. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely prepared. Telling the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the residents gathering in the very same pub, visiting the same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Division

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russians put up timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the entire village, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to pull back across the brook. For a time, locals could continue to jump across, though as restrictions increased they were required to show identification, although each person was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could continue to view each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were banned. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a western local who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his professional career building it. Locals were polled early on about how how long a section barrier they wanted to maintain. They chose a stretch on the west edge, close to where one of their own was able to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was significantly fortified.

Maintained Structures

Two watchtowers are conserved together with a set of tableaux showing the most significant events in the village’s history. As we walk, the director details the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain specific authorization to care for their crops; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but not both, lest they attempted to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Context

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but in excess of two times more people (exceeding 300) died trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They did not supported the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to see each year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and large car park – is expected to