🔗 Share this article

A creek so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet split a community for more than four decades. By an accident of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own wall was opened, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of residents started memorialising their history. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore households apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for giving all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk never stood in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the identical inn, going to the very same place of worship and placing their kids to the identical school.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russians installed wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the complete village, setting up their headquarters in a house on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to withdraw back over the stream. For a time, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were required to show identification, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could still view each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side waving and shouting were banned. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his professional career creating it. Villagers were asked early on about how how long a section structure they wished to maintain. They selected a section on the western perimeter, close to where a villager was able to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the border was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Installations

A pair of observation towers are conserved together with a collection of exhibits depicting the most significant events in the hamlet’s past. As we move, the director enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to tend to their fields; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, lest they sought to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but over two times more persons (more than 300) died seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see every year, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Modern Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is expected to