Serious Trouble in ‘Miniature Berlin’: The Small Hamlet Divided in Half by the Cold War

An brook so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades. By an accident of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own barrier was breached, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about memorialising their heritage. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Addressing the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which ripped families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its men the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals gathering in the very same tavern, going to the identical church and sending their children to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the creek. For a year they took over the whole village, establishing their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw across the brook. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to show identity papers, even though everyone knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Villagers were consulted early on about how how long a section barrier they wished to keep. They selected a section on the west edge, near where a local resident succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Installations

A pair of watchtowers are maintained in addition to a collection of displays showing the most impactful events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to care for their crops; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but in excess of twice as many people (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director informs me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see each year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, film screening area and large car park – is expected to