🔗 Share this article

A stream so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a community for in excess of four decades. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a collection of local people began memorialising their past. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely ready. Addressing the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk never stood in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the identical inn, going to the identical church and enrolling their children to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the brook. For a year they occupied the whole community, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to withdraw across the stream. For a time, residents could continue to jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to present identification, even though everyone knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could still view each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were forbidden. One woman was put on a Stasi watch list for answering “same to you” to a western local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I heard narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career building it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how what length of wall they wanted to keep. They chose a stretch on the west fringe, near where one of their own managed to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are preserved together with a set of displays illustrating the most dramatic dates in the community’s chronicle. As we move, the director enumerates the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents needed particular approval to tend to their produce; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but never both, in case they attempted to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but more than two times more individuals (more than 300) died seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of destination. Roughly 15,000 came to see annually, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Modern Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and large car park – is expected to