Serious Difficulties in ‘Miniature Berlin’: The Small Hamlet Split in Half by the Cold War Era

An brook so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a village for more than four decades. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers began memorialising their history. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents socializing in the identical inn, visiting the identical religious building and sending their children to the same educational institution.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russians erected wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the whole community, establishing their command in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a period, residents could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to present identification, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were banned. One woman was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian local who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his professional career building it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how much barrier they wanted to preserve. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian perimeter, near where one of their own succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Installations

2 watchtowers are preserved together with a series of displays depicting the most impactful events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen lists the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to look after their produce; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, lest they tried to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Context

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but over two times more individuals (well over 300) were killed trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor resisted it, the director explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand visited every year, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and sizable car park – is expected to