Serious Trouble in ‘Miniature Berlin’: This Small Settlement Separated in Two by the Cold War

A brook so low you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of local people set about commemorating their heritage. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely finished. Telling the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the residents gathering in the identical pub, attending the very same church and sending their young ones to the identical school.

Post-War Division

Then came the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the creek. For a year they took over the entire community, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to retreat across the brook. For a period, locals could continue to cross over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to display ID, although each person knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his occupational time developing it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how much structure they wanted to keep. They selected a section on the western edge, near where one of their own was able to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Preserved Buildings

2 guard towers are conserved alongside a series of tableaux illustrating the most impactful dates in the community’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to look after their crops; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but never both, in case they tried to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Background

The border between West Germany and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but in excess of twice as many persons (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see each year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and big parking lot – is expected to