Serious Problems in ‘Tiny Berlin’: This Minuscule Hamlet Separated in Half by the Cold War

An brook so low you scarcely got your feet wet split a community for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of residents began memorialising their history. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely ready. Speaking to the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore families asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the residents gathering in the very same tavern, visiting the same religious building and sending their children to the same school.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the complete community, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a while, villagers could continue to jump across, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to show ID, although everyone knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Increase of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian local who said her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his professional career creating it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wanted to keep. They chose a portion on the western fringe, adjacent to where one of their own managed to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was substantially fortified.

Maintained Structures

A pair of guard towers are maintained in addition to a series of displays illustrating the most significant dates in the hamlet’s history. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers required special permission to look after their produce; the partner could use the harvesting machine but not both, in case they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Background

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but more than two times more persons (well over 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They did not supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15k visited each year, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is probable to