Big Trouble in ‘Tiny Berlin’: This Tiny Settlement Divided in Two by the Cold War Period

A brook so low you hardly got your feet wet split a settlement for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own division was breached, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about documenting their history. The project is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Telling the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the very same pub, going to the same church and placing their young ones to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Then came the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they seized the entire community, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to present ID, although each person knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the east side signaling and shouting were prohibited. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian local who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his working life developing it. Residents were polled early on about how what length of barrier they desired to maintain. They selected a section on the western edge, adjacent to where a local resident managed to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

2 observation towers are conserved together with a set of displays illustrating the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, the director lists the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers required special permission to tend to their produce; the partner could use the combine harvester but never the pair, lest they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but in excess of two times more people (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between two political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 visited annually, 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 national security head.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Modern Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and sizable car park – is probable to