Big Problems in ‘Tiny Berlin’: The Tiny Hamlet Divided in Two by the Cold War Era

A brook so narrow you hardly got your feet wet separated a village for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own wall was breached, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents set about memorialising their past. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which tore families apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which pulled households apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the path of the residents gathering in the identical inn, attending the identical place of worship and placing their kids to the identical learning center.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russians erected timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the complete village, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a while, locals could still cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to show identity papers, even though each person knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were banned. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a West German local who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time creating it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how much barrier they wanted to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the west edge, near where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Preserved Structures

2 watchtowers are maintained in addition to a series of tableaux illustrating the most significant dates in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, the director details the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed particular approval to tend to their crops; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but in excess of two times more people (well over 300) were killed seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a type of site of interest. About 15,000 visited every year, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and big vehicle area – is probable to