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

A stream so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a community for over four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a group of residents began commemorating their heritage. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Addressing the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk never stood in the path of the residents gathering in the identical inn, going to the very same place of worship and sending their kids to the identical learning center.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the complete hamlet, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to withdraw back over the stream. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to display identity papers, although everyone knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could continue to observe each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were banned. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian local who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his working life developing it. Villagers were consulted early on about how how long a section barrier they desired to preserve. They selected a portion on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a villager was able to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was significantly fortified.

Conserved Installations

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a set of displays illustrating the most significant moments in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director enumerates the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to care for their crops; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but never both, lest they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but more than twice as many people (well over 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They did not backed the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see each year, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Modern Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and big parking lot – is expected to