🔗 Share this article

An brook so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own division was opened, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers started commemorating their past. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely ready. Addressing the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped households apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the way of the residents drinking in the very same inn, going to the identical religious building and enrolling their kids to the identical school.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the brook. For a year they seized the whole village, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw back over the stream. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to show identification, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could continue to view each other by climbing hills, but on the east side waving and calling out were banned. A local woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a western villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

I heard accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life creating it. Locals were asked early on about how what length of structure they wanted to preserve. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own managed to get away in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the border was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of guard towers are conserved in addition to a set of displays illustrating the most dramatic events in the community’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers had to obtain specific authorization to look after their fields; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but never both, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but more than two times more individuals (well over 300) were killed seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to visit annually, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is expected to