Serious Trouble in ‘Little Berlin’: This Small Hamlet Split in Two by the Cold War Period

An creek so low you barely got your feet wet split a village for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own division was opened, and before their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents started memorialising their past. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely finished. Telling the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal split, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore families into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the very same inn, visiting the very same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the same school.

Post-War Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the creek. For a year they seized the entire village, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to pull back back over the creek. For a while, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were required to display identification, although each person was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “likewise” to a West German local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his working life creating it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how what length of structure they desired to maintain. They chose a section on the west edge, near where one of their own was able to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of guard towers are conserved together with a collection of displays illustrating the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to look after their crops; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but never the two, lest they tried to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Background

The border between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but more than twice as many individuals (well over 300) were killed trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They neither supported the East German authorities nor fought it, the director states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. About 15,000 visited each year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and large vehicle area – is expected to