🔗 Share this article

An stream so low you hardly got your ankles wet split a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own wall was opened, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers began commemorating their past. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely ready. Telling the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the way of the residents socializing in the same pub, visiting the identical religious building and enrolling their kids to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they took over the complete hamlet, creating their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a while, residents could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were required to display ID, even though everyone understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still view each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “back at you” to a western local who said her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his professional career creating it. Villagers were consulted early on about how what length of wall they wished to keep. They opted for a stretch on the western perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident was able to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

2 watchtowers are maintained alongside a set of tableaux illustrating the most impactful dates in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, the director enumerates the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to tend to their crops; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but never both, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Context

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but more than twice as many persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a type of destination. Roughly 15,000 visited every year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, movie theater and big car park – is expected to