Big Difficulties in ‘Tiny Berlin’: The Small Hamlet Split in Two by the Cold War Era

A brook so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, 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 Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people began commemorating their history. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the identical pub, attending the very same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the identical learning center.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they seized the entire hamlet, establishing their command in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw back over the creek. For a while, residents could continue to jump across, though as limitations tightened they were forced to display identification, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a West German resident who said her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I was told narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how what length of wall they wished to preserve. They chose a section on the Bavarian fringe, near where a villager succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was substantially fortified.

Preserved Installations

A pair of watchtowers are maintained alongside a series of tableaux depicting the most dramatic dates in the village’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to look after their crops; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of twice as many persons (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They did not supported the socialist government nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 came to see annually, binoculars in hand, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and sizable car park – is probable to