🔗 Share this article

A creek so low you hardly got your ankles wet separated a village for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own division was opened, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers began documenting their heritage. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Telling the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which pulled relatives apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the residents gathering in the same tavern, going to the identical place of worship and enrolling their kids to the same school.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Russians erected timber poles by the creek. For a year they occupied the entire village, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to pull back back over the creek. For a time, locals could still hop over, though as restrictions increased they were forced to present ID, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could continue to see each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a western resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time creating it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how what length of wall they desired to keep. They opted for a section on the western perimeter, near where a villager succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of guard towers are conserved alongside a collection of tableaux showing the most impactful events in the community’s past. As we stroll, the director details the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers required special permission to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but not both, in case they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The border between West Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but more than twice as many people (well over 300) died trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About 15,000 came to visit each year, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Current Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and big vehicle area – is expected to