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

An brook so shallow you hardly got your feet wet separated a village for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own division was torn down, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people started memorialising their history. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Telling the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Past Origins

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the very same inn, visiting the very same religious building and placing their kids to the identical school.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they came, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the complete hamlet, establishing their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw across the stream. For a while, locals could continue to cross over, though as restrictions increased they were required to show identification, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side signaling and yelling were banned. One woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for replying “same to you” to a western resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his professional career developing it. Locals were polled early on about how much barrier they desired to maintain. They opted for a section on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

2 watchtowers are preserved together with a collection of exhibits showing the most impactful moments in the community’s chronicle. As we walk, the director lists the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to look after their fields; the partner could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but more than two times more persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit annually, optical devices in possession, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and large vehicle area – is likely to