Major Trouble in ‘Miniature Berlin’: The Tiny Village Split in Two by the Cold War Period

A creek so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a village for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a group of local people started documenting their past. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Telling the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals gathering in the identical tavern, attending the same church and enrolling their young ones to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the stream. For a year they occupied the entire community, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to pull back across the creek. For a time, residents could still jump across, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to show identity papers, although all knew who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could continue to view each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a western villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his occupational time creating it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wanted to maintain. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian edge, near where one of their own was able to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was substantially fortified.

Conserved Installations

Two observation towers are conserved together with a series of displays showing the most significant moments in the community’s past. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents needed particular approval to tend to their crops; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, for fear that they tried to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Background

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but over twice as many persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They neither supported the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to visit annually, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Current Changes

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