🔗 Share this article

A creek so shallow you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of local people began commemorating their history. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel division, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the path of the residents socializing in the same tavern, visiting the identical place of worship and enrolling their children to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they took over the whole village, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were required to display identification, although each person was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could continue to observe each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were prohibited. One woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Residents were consulted early on about how much structure they desired to maintain. They selected a portion on the west edge, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

2 watchtowers are preserved together with a collection of tableaux depicting the most impactful events in the village’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed special permission to care for their crops; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but not the two, lest they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but in excess of double the number individuals (more than 300) died attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 came to see annually, optical devices in hand, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is expected to