🔗 Share this article

A stream so shallow you hardly got your feet wet divided a settlement for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own division was breached, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people started documenting their history. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the very same tavern, visiting the identical religious building and enrolling their children to the very same educational institution.

After the War Separation

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians put up wooden posts by the stream. For a year they seized the complete hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to retreat back over the creek. For a while, locals could still hop over, though as controls increased they were forced to display identification, even though each person understood who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could continue to see each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were forbidden. One woman was placed on a Stasi watch list for answering “same to you” to a West German resident who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I heard narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his occupational time building it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how what length of wall they wanted to keep. They chose a section on the west perimeter, near where a villager managed to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Preserved Installations

2 watchtowers are preserved alongside a collection of displays depicting the most impactful dates in the hamlet’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to look after their crops; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but not the two, lest they tried to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but in excess of two times more people (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit every year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and big vehicle area – is probable to