Big Difficulties in ‘Tiny Berlin’: This Tiny Settlement Split in Half by the Cold War Era
A creek so shallow you barely got your feet wet divided a village for over four decades. By an accident of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.
Preserving Historical Events
A few months after their own barrier was breached, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers began memorialising their heritage. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Addressing the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped households apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”
“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”
Historical Background
Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the same inn, attending the very same church and placing their children to the same educational institution.
After the War Division
Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the whole hamlet, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a time, villagers could still jump across, though as restrictions increased they were forced to present ID, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to come back at evening.
Increase of Border Restrictions
Subsequently, 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 landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side signaling and shouting were forbidden. One woman was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who said her “good new year”.
Museum Development
It was related to me stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career building it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they wanted to maintain. They selected a stretch on the west fringe, close to where a villager succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was significantly fortified.
Conserved Buildings
2 guard towers are maintained in addition to a collection of tableaux depicting the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, the director lists the rules: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required specific authorization to look after their produce; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but never the two, lest they attempted to flee. Armed guards were on duty.
Wider Context
The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but over twice as many individuals (more than 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.
Village Daily Living
The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between two political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They did not supported the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.
Visitors
For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. About 15,000 came to visit every year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.
Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.
Current Developments
The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and big vehicle area – is probable to
