🔗 Share this article

A brook so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet split a village for in excess of four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents started commemorating their history. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Telling the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which ripped relatives asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which ripped relatives asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk did not stand in the way of the locals drinking in the identical inn, going to the very same church and enrolling their kids to the identical learning center.

After the War Division

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the complete community, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a time, residents could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to show identity papers, although each person was aware who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could continue to observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were forbidden. One woman was placed on a Stasi watch list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian local who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his professional career developing it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how much structure they wanted to preserve. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a local resident was able to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Conserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are preserved in addition to a series of displays depicting the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen details the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to tend to their fields; the partner could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, in case they tried to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but more than twice as many people (more than 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They neither backed the socialist government nor fought it, the director explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of destination. Roughly 15,000 came to see every year, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and large parking lot – is probable to