Serious Difficulties in ‘Little Berlin’: This Small Hamlet Split in Two by the Cold War

An brook so shallow you hardly got your feet wet separated a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people began documenting their heritage. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Speaking to the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were observers of an cruel separation, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Past Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals gathering in the identical pub, visiting the very same church and sending their young ones to the identical learning center.

After the War Division

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they came, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the entire village, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to retreat across the stream. For a period, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were required to present identity papers, even though each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the east side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police watch list for replying “same to you” to a western villager who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career building it. Villagers were consulted early on about how what length of wall they wished to keep. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a local resident managed to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

2 observation towers are preserved alongside a series of tableaux showing the most impactful events in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required special permission to look after their produce; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but never the two, in case they sought to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but more than twice as many persons (well over 300) were killed trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. About 15,000 came to see each year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Present-Day Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and large car park – is likely to