🔗 Share this article

An stream so low you scarcely got your feet wet split a village for over four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was breached, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people set about documenting their history. The project is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely ready. Addressing the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which tore households apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the same inn, going to the identical religious building and sending their young ones to the identical learning center.

Post-War Division

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the brook. For a year they seized the whole hamlet, establishing their command in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to pull back back over the brook. For a time, locals could still hop over, though as controls tightened they were forced to show identification, even though all understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The locals could continue to see each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side waving and calling out were prohibited. One woman was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a western villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career building it. Villagers were consulted early on about how how long a section barrier they wished to preserve. They selected a section on the Bavarian edge, near where a local resident succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are conserved alongside a set of tableaux depicting the most impactful events in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed special permission to care for their crops; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but never the pair, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The border between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but over twice as many people (well over 300) died seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They neither backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. About 15k visited each year, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, film screening area and large car park – is likely to