Big Problems in ‘Tiny Berlin’: The Small Hamlet Divided in Two by the Cold War Period

An stream so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people started commemorating their past. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Telling the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents gathering in the identical pub, going to the identical religious building and placing their kids to the same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Then came the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the brook. For a year they seized the whole community, creating their command in a building on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to pull back across the stream. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were required to show identity papers, even though everyone knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was added to a Stasi watch list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his working life developing it. Locals were consulted early on about how much structure they desired to maintain. They selected a section on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the border was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Structures

Two guard towers are maintained together with a collection of exhibits showing the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, the director enumerates the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to care for their crops; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, lest they sought to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but over two times more persons (exceeding 300) died seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They neither backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. About 15,000 came to visit each year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is likely to