Major Trouble in ‘Little Berlin’: The Small Village Divided in Half by the Cold War Period

An creek so narrow you hardly got your feet wet separated a village for more than four decades. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own division was breached, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of residents began commemorating their past. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which ripped relatives apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity never stood in the manner of the locals socializing in the very same pub, visiting the identical church and sending their young ones to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Russians installed timber poles by the stream. For a annual period 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 US forces persuaded them to retreat back over the stream. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were forced to display ID, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Escalation of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could continue to observe each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were banned. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his professional career building it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how what length of structure they wished to preserve. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where one of their own managed to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Structures

A pair of watchtowers are maintained alongside a series of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic events in the community’s past. As we move, the director details the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to care for their crops; the partner could work the combine harvester but never the two, lest they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but more than double the number people (exceeding 300) died seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They did not backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of destination. About 15,000 came to see annually, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Modern Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and sizable car park – is likely to