Big Problems in ‘Miniature Berlin’: This Tiny Hamlet Separated in Two by the Cold War Period

An creek so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a community for more than four decades. By an accident of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents began commemorating their heritage. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely ready. Telling the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its men the title Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the residents gathering in the same inn, visiting the same church and sending their kids to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Division

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the whole hamlet, establishing their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to pull back across the stream. For a while, residents could continue to hop over, though as controls tightened they were required to present identity papers, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his working life developing it. Villagers were asked at an early stage about how much barrier they desired to maintain. They opted for a portion on the western perimeter, close to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

Two observation towers are conserved together with a series of displays illustrating the most dramatic events in the community’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to look after their fields; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The border between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but more than two times more people (exceeding 300) died attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a type of site of interest. Roughly 15k came to visit each year, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Current Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and large parking lot – is expected to