Serious Trouble in ‘Little Berlin’: This Tiny Hamlet Divided in Half by the Cold War Era

A creek so low you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about commemorating their history. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the same tavern, attending the same place of worship and placing their kids to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the whole community, setting up their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a period, residents could still jump across, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to show identity papers, although everyone understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to see each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side waving and calling out were forbidden. One woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for answering “back at you” to a western resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how what length of wall they wished to keep. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a local resident managed to flee in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Structures

2 watchtowers are maintained in addition to a series of displays depicting the most significant dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to care for their produce; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, lest they sought to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but over double the number individuals (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. the director informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. About fifteen thousand came to visit each year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Current Changes

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