Big Difficulties in ‘Little Berlin’: The Tiny Settlement Split in Two by the Cold War
An stream so low you hardly got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades. By an accident of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.
Memorialising History
A few months after their own wall was breached, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers began documenting their heritage. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Telling the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”
“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”
Bygone Origins
Even at its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants socializing in the very same tavern, attending the very same religious building and sending their young ones to the same learning center.
After the War Division
Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the stream. For a year they took over the complete hamlet, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to pull back back over the creek. For a time, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to present ID, even though all was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.
Increase of Border Restrictions
After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were forbidden. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a western local who greeted her “happy new year”.
Heritage Site Development
I heard stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his working life building it. Residents were asked early on about how what length of wall they desired to preserve. They selected a section on the western fringe, adjacent to where one of their own was able to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the frontier was heavily fortified.
Maintained Buildings
2 watchtowers are conserved together with a collection of displays illustrating the most significant dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents needed specific authorization to tend to their produce; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but not both, in case they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.
Larger Background
The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many people (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.
Village Life
The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.
Visitors
For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. Approximately 15k came to see annually, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.
Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.
Present-Day Developments
The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and large car park – is expected to
