Major Trouble in ‘Miniature Berlin’: This Tiny Hamlet Separated in Two by the Cold War Period

A brook so low you hardly got your ankles wet split a community for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a group of local people began memorialising their history. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Telling the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

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

Historical Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the locals socializing in the same inn, attending the very same church and sending their young ones to the very same school.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they seized the whole village, setting up their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to pull back back over the brook. For a time, residents could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were required to show identification, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were consulted early on about how how long a section structure they desired to keep. They selected a portion on the west perimeter, adjacent to where a villager managed to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Preserved Buildings

2 watchtowers are conserved alongside a set of tableaux illustrating the most significant moments in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, the director lists the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed specific authorization to care for their crops; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but never the two, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Background

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but over twice as many people (exceeding 300) died seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director tells me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to visit annually, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and big vehicle area – is likely to