Serious Trouble in ‘Miniature Berlin’: This Minuscule Village Divided in Two by the Cold War

A brook so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of residents began commemorating their past. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely finished. Addressing the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an cruel separation, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the very same tavern, visiting the same church and sending their children to the same learning center.

Post-War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they took over the complete hamlet, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a time, locals could continue to cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to show identification, although everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a West German local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were polled early on about how much barrier they desired to maintain. They opted for a section on the western perimeter, near where a villager was able to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was heavily fortified.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are conserved in addition to a collection of exhibits depicting the most dramatic events in the village’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to care for their fields; the partner could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, in case they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Context

The border between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but more than twice as many people (more than 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the uncertain territory between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k visited each year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, the television series, a television program about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is expected to