Big Difficulties in ‘Miniature Berlin’: This Small Hamlet Divided in Two by the Cold War Era

An stream so shallow you barely got your feet wet divided a community for more than four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of local people began commemorating their history. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely ready. Telling the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped households apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the way of the residents socializing in the very same inn, attending the identical place of worship and placing their young ones to the same school.

After the War Division

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Russians erected wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the whole village, setting up their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to retreat back over the brook. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to display identity papers, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a West German resident who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his professional career creating it. Villagers were consulted early on about how what length of wall they wished to maintain. They chose a stretch on the west perimeter, adjacent to where a villager was able to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Preserved Installations

A pair of watchtowers are preserved alongside a collection of exhibits depicting the most significant moments in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their crops; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, in case they sought to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but in excess of double the number people (well over 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or artisans, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit every year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Modern Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and large parking lot – is expected to