Major Difficulties in ‘Miniature Berlin’: The Small Village Divided in Two by the Cold War

A brook so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a village for over four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people began documenting their history. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely finished. Telling the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Historical Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals drinking in the same inn, attending the identical place of worship and placing their kids to the same school.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they took over the whole hamlet, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to show identity papers, although all understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could continue to see each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a West German local who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his working life developing it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they wanted to maintain. They chose a section on the west perimeter, near where a villager was able to get away in the darkest hours with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Installations

Two observation towers are conserved alongside a collection of tableaux depicting the most dramatic dates in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, the director enumerates the rules: no one could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to look after their crops; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but never the two, for fear that they sought to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but over twice as many individuals (more than 300) were killed trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. the director tells me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor resisted it, the director explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Roughly 15k visited each year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Current Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, movie theater and sizable car park – is expected to