🔗 Share this article

A brook so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a village for over four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of villagers began commemorating their heritage. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its men the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the locals gathering in the same tavern, going to the same religious building and placing their young ones to the identical school.

After the War Separation

Then came the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Russians erected timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they seized the complete hamlet, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to pull back back over the creek. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to show identity papers, although all knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were forbidden. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a western resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Residents were polled early on about how much wall they desired to keep. They chose a section on the western perimeter, near where one of their own succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the boundary was significantly fortified.

Preserved Buildings

2 guard towers are conserved alongside a series of displays depicting the most dramatic dates in the village’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to look after their produce; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but more than two times more people (more than 300) were killed trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They did not endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand visited annually, optical devices in possession, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Modern Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and big vehicle area – is likely to