🔗 Share this article

A brook so low you barely got your ankles wet divided a community for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers began commemorating their past. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Telling the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel split, which ripped families apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the way of the locals drinking in the very same inn, going to the very same church and sending their children to the identical learning center.

After the War Division

Then came the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the creek. For a year they occupied the complete village, setting up their headquarters in a building on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to pull back back over the creek. For a while, locals could still cross over, though as limitations increased they were required to display identity papers, although each person was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were prohibited. One woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a western resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were polled early on about how what length of structure they wished to keep. They opted for a section on the western edge, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Conserved Structures

2 guard towers are conserved alongside a set of displays depicting the most significant dates in the community’s past. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed special permission to tend to their crops; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but never both, lest they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but in excess of double the number people (well over 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to visit each year, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is expected to