🔗 Share this article

A creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a village for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own division was torn down, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a group of residents set about commemorating their heritage. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Historical Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the locals socializing in the identical inn, visiting the very same church and enrolling their young ones to the very same learning center.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russians installed timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the whole community, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a period, residents could still cross over, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to show identification, although everyone was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side waving and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a West German local who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his professional career creating it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how much barrier they wanted to keep. They selected a section on the Bavarian edge, close to where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of observation towers are preserved alongside a series of displays illustrating the most dramatic dates in the village’s past. As we move, the director details the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Farmers needed specific authorization to look after their crops; the spouse could use the combine harvester but never the two, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but more than double the number persons (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between two political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They neither backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to visit annually, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and big car park – is likely to