Major Problems in ‘Little Berlin’: The Tiny Hamlet Split in Two by the Cold War Era

An brook so shallow you barely got your feet wet divided a community for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about memorialising their history. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Addressing the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the residents drinking in the same inn, attending the very same church and enrolling their young ones to the same school.

Following WWII Split

Then came the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the entire hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to pull back back over the stream. For a time, residents could continue to hop over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to present ID, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police watch list for answering “same to you” to a West German villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his working life developing it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how what length of barrier they wished to keep. They chose a portion on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where a local resident managed to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the border was substantially fortified.

Maintained Structures

2 observation towers are maintained in addition to a collection of exhibits showing the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the border. Farmers needed specific authorization to care for their produce; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they sought to flee. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Context

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but in excess of two times more people (exceeding 300) were killed trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They did not supported the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to see each year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and big car park – is probable to