Serious Problems in ‘Tiny Berlin’: The Tiny Hamlet Separated in Two by the Cold War

An stream so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own division was breached, and before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of residents set about memorialising their history. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Telling the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the locals gathering in the identical pub, going to the identical place of worship and placing their kids to the identical school.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians erected wood stakes by the brook. For a year they seized the entire village, setting up their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to pull back back over the creek. For a period, residents could continue to cross over, though as controls became stricter they were required to show identity papers, although each person was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were banned. A local woman was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a West German villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his occupational time creating it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they wanted to keep. They chose a stretch on the west perimeter, near where a villager managed to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the border was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Structures

Two watchtowers are maintained in addition to a series of displays showing the most significant moments in the community’s past. As we walk, the director details the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers needed special permission to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but not the pair, in case they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but over double the number people (well over 300) died seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They did not backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see every year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Modern Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, shop, movie theater and big car park – is expected to