Major Difficulties in ‘Miniature Berlin’: This Minuscule Hamlet Split in Half by the Cold War

An brook so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a village for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own wall was breached, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a group of local people started documenting their history. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk never stood in the manner of the residents socializing in the very same pub, going to the same religious building and enrolling their kids to the identical learning center.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the brook. For a year they took over the complete hamlet, creating their command in a building on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a time, villagers could continue to cross over, though as restrictions increased they were forced to display identity papers, even though everyone understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could continue to observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a western resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his working life creating it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how how long a section wall they desired to preserve. They opted for a section on the west perimeter, near where one of their own managed to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are preserved alongside a set of displays depicting the most dramatic dates in the community’s past. As we move, Lebergen details the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their crops; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but never both, lest they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Background

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but over two times more persons (exceeding 300) were killed trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They neither backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. Roughly 15,000 visited every year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and sizable car park – is expected to