🔗 Share this article

A creek so shallow you hardly got your feet wet split a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own division was torn down, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents began commemorating their heritage. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Telling the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the very same inn, visiting the very same religious building and placing their young ones to the very same school.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the creek. For a year they occupied the entire village, establishing their command in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to pull back back over the creek. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to present identity papers, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could still view each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side waving and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police watch list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian local who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his working life developing it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how much barrier they wanted to maintain. They opted for a section on the west perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own managed to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are conserved together with a set of exhibits illustrating the most impactful moments in the community’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed specific authorization to look after their fields; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, lest they attempted to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but over double the number individuals (well over 300) were killed trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They neither backed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see annually, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Current Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and big car park – is probable to