🔗 Share this article

A stream so low you hardly got your feet wet divided a settlement for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own wall was torn down, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers began documenting their heritage. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely finished. Speaking to the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk never stood in the way of the residents drinking in the identical pub, attending the same religious building and placing their young ones to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russians installed timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they took over the complete village, establishing their headquarters in a house on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to pull back back over the stream. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as controls became stricter they were forced to show identity papers, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could continue to view each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a western resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard narratives including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career creating it. Residents were polled early on about how what length of barrier they desired to maintain. They chose a portion on the Bavarian fringe, close to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Structures

A pair of watchtowers are preserved alongside a set of tableaux illustrating the most significant moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers required particular approval to care for their fields; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but not the pair, lest they attempted to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many people (exceeding 300) died attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They neither supported the communist regime nor fought it, the director explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of site of interest. About 15k came to see annually, optical devices in possession, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Current Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and big parking lot – is likely to