Big Trouble in ‘Miniature Berlin’: This Tiny Hamlet Divided in Half by the Cold War Era

An creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own wall was breached, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers started memorialising their heritage. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not completely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which ripped relatives asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals drinking in the identical tavern, visiting the very same church and sending their young ones to the very same learning center.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russians put up wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the entire village, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat back over the creek. For a time, locals could continue to cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to present ID, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to see each other by ascending hills, but on the east side signaling and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a western local who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me stories such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how much structure they wished to maintain. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a local resident managed to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the border was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Structures

2 observation towers are preserved alongside a collection of tableaux illustrating the most impactful dates in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director details the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain special permission to care for their produce; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but not both, in case they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but over twice as many persons (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between two political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They did not backed the socialist government nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. About 15k came to visit annually, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and big car park – is likely to