“Little Berlin”
Like Berlin, the village of Mödlareuth on the Thuringian-Bavarian border was for years dissected by the German-German frontier. Now it is celebrating the 25th year of reunification.
The 50-person village of Mödlareuth was for years dissected by the German-German border. A wall divided the hamlet, one part of which belonged to the Bavarian township of Töpen, the other to the Thuringian town of Gefell. On the eastern side the 3.30-meter-high concrete wall was heavily guarded; families were resettled, one family torn apart. “Only after the wall fell could the two brothers wave to each other”, says the local mayor Romy Hammerschmidt today.
1,000 tourists per inhabitant
Mödlareuth is also called “Little Berlin”, for here, as in Berlin, is evident the division that went through the middle of people’s lives. The third of October, the Day of German Unity, therefore, is a very special holiday in Mödlareuth: every year 4,000 to 5,000 people from all of Germany travel to the “Germany Festival”. When the former German federal chancellor Helmut Kohl visited the village, 30,000 visitors attended the festivities. “Many visitors return every year”, says Hammerschmidt. On display are parts of the wall, barbed-wire fences and two watchtowers. Even a tank and a helicopter of the National People’s Army stand in the center of the hamlet. A German-German Museum documents the history of the division. It is today a major attraction; every year there are 1,000 tourists to every Mödlareuther.
For the Day of Unity the museum will go on tour. It has been invited to Frankfurt, where this year the celebrations of German reunification will take place, and has a place in the Liebfrauenberg. Romy Hammerschmidt will remain in Mödlareuth: “We don’t usually have such big parties here; it’s something different”.