Serious Problems in ‘Tiny Berlin’: This Minuscule Village Split in Two by the Cold War

A stream so low you barely got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own division was breached, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers began commemorating their history. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the residents gathering in the identical inn, going to the same place of worship and placing their young ones to the same school.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they took over the entire hamlet, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw across the stream. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as limitations increased they were obliged to display identification, even though each person was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a western villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they wanted to keep. They chose a portion on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Maintained Buildings

2 guard towers are conserved in addition to a set of displays depicting the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, the director lists the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain specific authorization to care for their produce; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but never both, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Background

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but over twice as many persons (well over 300) died seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, the director states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit annually, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and big parking lot – is likely to