Serious Difficulties in ‘Little Berlin’: This Small Hamlet Split in Half by the Cold War Period

A stream so low you hardly got your feet wet split a settlement for over four decades. By an accident of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own division was torn down, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a group of villagers started documenting their heritage. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which pulled families apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals drinking in the very same tavern, going to the identical religious building and placing their children to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the brook. For a year they seized the entire community, creating their control center in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to pull back across the creek. For a while, residents could continue to jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were required to show identification, even though each person knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to view each other by climbing hills, but on the east side waving and calling out were banned. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “likewise” to a western villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how what length of wall they wished to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the west perimeter, near where a villager was able to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the frontier was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Installations

2 observation towers are conserved alongside a series of displays illustrating the most dramatic dates in the village’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but never both, in case they tried to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Context

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but over double the number persons (well over 300) were killed trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between two political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand visited annually, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and sizable car park – is expected to