🔗 Share this article

A creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet split a settlement for more than four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of residents set about documenting their history. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Speaking to the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the locals gathering in the very same inn, visiting the very same place of worship and placing their kids to the identical educational institution.

After the War Split

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the creek. For a year they seized the whole hamlet, creating their headquarters in a building on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to retreat across the stream. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as controls increased they were obliged to present ID, although everyone knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were banned. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a western local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his working life developing it. Villagers were polled early on about how what length of structure they wished to preserve. They chose a portion on the west edge, close to where a villager was able to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Maintained Structures

Two guard towers are conserved in addition to a collection of exhibits illustrating the most significant dates in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the rules: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their produce; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but not the pair, for fear that they tried to flee. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but in excess of double the number persons (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k came to see each year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and large vehicle area – is probable to