🔗 Share this article

An brook so shallow you barely got your ankles wet separated a community for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of local people started memorialising their heritage. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity never stood in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the same pub, visiting the identical place of worship and placing their young ones to the same learning center.

After the War Split

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the complete hamlet, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw across the brook. For a while, locals could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to present identity papers, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could continue to see each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were banned. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his working life building it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how what length of barrier they wished to preserve. They chose a portion on the Bavarian edge, close to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Structures

A pair of observation towers are maintained together with a collection of tableaux showing the most impactful moments in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers required particular approval to care for their fields; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but not the two, in case they attempted to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but over double the number individuals (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They neither backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of destination. Approximately 15k came to visit each year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and big parking lot – is likely to