Serious Problems in ‘Little Berlin’: The Minuscule Settlement Split in Half by the Cold War Era

A creek so low you scarcely got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers started commemorating their past. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Origins

Starting at its creation in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk never stood in the way of the residents socializing in the very same tavern, visiting the very same church and placing their children to the identical learning center.

Post-War Split

Then came the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the whole village, creating their headquarters in a house on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to pull back across the stream. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as controls tightened they were required to display ID, even though all understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the east side signaling and yelling were banned. One woman was added to a Stasi surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a Bavarian local who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career creating it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wished to maintain. They selected a portion on the western edge, near where a villager was able to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

2 guard towers are preserved together with a series of tableaux showing the most significant moments in the community’s past. As we move, the director enumerates the rules: no one could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed particular approval to care for their crops; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but never both, lest they attempted to flee. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Background

The border between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but over double the number people (more than 300) died seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They did not backed the socialist government nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see every year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, movie theater and big car park – is expected to