Major Difficulties in ‘Miniature Berlin’: The Tiny Hamlet Split in Two by the Cold War Period

An brook so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a community for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people began commemorating their past. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the same inn, going to the very same religious building and enrolling their kids to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the complete community, establishing their headquarters in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a time, villagers could still jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were required to show identification, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still view each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “likewise” to a western villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life developing it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how what length of wall they wished to keep. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where one of their own managed to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the border was heavily fortified.

Conserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are preserved in addition to a set of displays showing the most dramatic events in the village’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, for fear that they attempted to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Background

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but over double the number individuals (well over 300) were killed attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They neither backed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand visited annually, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, film screening area and big parking lot – is likely to