Serious Trouble in ‘Little Berlin’: The Minuscule Hamlet Divided in Half by the Cold War Period

An creek so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for more than four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own wall was breached, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers started commemorating their history. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely ready. Telling the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

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

Historical Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the very same tavern, visiting the same church and sending their young ones to the same school.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they seized the entire village, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw back over the creek. For a time, locals could continue to hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to show identification, although all understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was added to a Stasi monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a western villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his occupational time creating it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how what length of structure they wished to maintain. They chose a portion on the western edge, close to where a local resident managed to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the border was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

Two watchtowers are maintained alongside a series of tableaux showing the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers had to obtain specific authorization to care for their crops; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but not the pair, lest they tried to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The border between West Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of double the number persons (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k visited each year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is probable to