Major Difficulties in ‘Tiny Berlin’: The Small Settlement Divided in Half by the Cold War
An brook so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, fields and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.
Memorialising History
A few months after their own division was breached, and prior to their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers started memorialising their history. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely finished. Speaking to the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which ripped families asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”
“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”
Historical Origins
Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the identical pub, visiting the very same church and placing their children to the very same educational institution.
After the War Separation
Then came the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the complete village, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to pull back back over the stream. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were forced to show identification, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.
Intensification of Boundary Measures
Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were banned. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “good new year”.
Exhibition Center Establishment
It was related to me accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his professional career creating it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they desired to preserve. They chose a section on the western edge, adjacent to where one of their own managed to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the boundary was heavily reinforced.
Conserved Buildings
A pair of observation towers are preserved in addition to a series of exhibits illustrating the most impactful dates in the community’s history. As we stroll, the director lists the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed special permission to tend to their produce; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, lest they sought to escape. Armed guards stood watch.
Larger Background
The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but over double the number persons (exceeding 300) died seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.
Village Life
The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.
Visitors
For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. About 15,000 came to see every year, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.
25 years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.
Current Changes
The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and big car park – is expected to
