Major Difficulties in ‘Miniature Berlin’: This Tiny Village Split in Half by the Cold War Period

An creek so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a community for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own barrier was breached, and before their country had become one in 1990, a group of residents started commemorating their past. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely finished. Telling the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which tore families apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

Historical Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for giving all its men the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the very same pub, going to the very same church and enrolling their young ones to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Split

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians erected wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they took over the complete village, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were forced to display identification, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were forbidden. One woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for answering “back at you” to a West German resident who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I was told stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life creating it. Villagers were polled early on about how how long a section wall they wanted to maintain. They selected a section on the western edge, close to where a local resident was able to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

Two guard towers are maintained in addition to a series of tableaux showing the most impactful events in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents needed specific authorization to tend to their produce; the spouse could use the combine harvester but never the two, lest they sought to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but in excess of double the number people (more than 300) died seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They did not supported the socialist government nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to see each year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and sizable car park – is likely to