🔗 Share this article

An brook so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and before their country had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers set about memorialising their history. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Addressing the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which pulled households apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the identical inn, attending the same place of worship and placing their kids to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the complete hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to pull back across the stream. For a while, locals could continue to cross over, though as controls tightened they were forced to present identity papers, even though all knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a Bavarian local who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Residents were consulted early on about how much wall they wished to keep. They chose a stretch on the western perimeter, close to where a villager succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Structures

Two guard towers are maintained alongside a series of tableaux depicting the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen details the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed special permission to look after their crops; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but never the two, in case they sought to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but over double the number persons (more than 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They did not backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see every year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is likely to