Major Difficulties in ‘Miniature Berlin’: This Tiny Hamlet Separated in Two by the Cold War

An stream so narrow you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own division was breached, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers started documenting their history. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely ready. Addressing the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled households apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Past Origins

Starting at its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents socializing in the very same inn, visiting the very same religious building and sending their young ones to the identical school.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the brook. For a year they seized the whole hamlet, setting up their command in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to retreat back over the stream. For a time, residents could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were forced to present identification, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The locals could continue to see each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. One woman was added to a Stasi watch list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his professional career developing it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they desired to keep. They selected a stretch on the western perimeter, close to where a villager was able to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the border was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Structures

Two watchtowers are maintained in addition to a set of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic events in the community’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required specific authorization to look after their produce; the partner could operate the combine harvester but not the pair, in case they sought to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but more than double the number persons (well over 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15k visited each year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and large parking lot – is probable to