Major Problems in ‘Little Berlin’: The Small Settlement Split in Half by the Cold War Era

An brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a community for over four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own division was torn down, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of residents began documenting their history. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal split, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity never stood in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the very same pub, visiting the same church and sending their children to the same school.

Post-War Split

Then came the second world war. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they took over the entire hamlet, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a time, residents could continue to cross over, though as controls increased they were obliged to display identity papers, even though all was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still view each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were banned. One woman was added to a Stasi monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a western resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wished to preserve. They chose a stretch on the west perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

Two observation towers are conserved alongside a set of displays depicting the most significant events in the village’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to look after their crops; the partner could use the harvesting machine but never both, in case they sought to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but over two times more persons (more than 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They did not endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand visited annually, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and large vehicle area – is probable to