Major Trouble in ‘Tiny Berlin’: This Tiny Settlement Separated in Two by the Cold War Period

A stream so narrow you barely got your ankles wet split a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people started commemorating their history. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely ready. Speaking to the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which pulled families into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the residents gathering in the identical tavern, going to the same place of worship and sending their young ones to the same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they appeared, the Russians put up wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they seized the whole community, setting up their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to retreat back over the creek. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to show identity papers, although each person understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a Bavarian local who said her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wanted to preserve. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own was able to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Conserved Installations

A pair of guard towers are conserved alongside a set of tableaux illustrating the most impactful moments in the community’s history. As we stroll, the director lists the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, in case they attempted to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Background

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but over two times more people (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They did not backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. About 15,000 came to visit annually, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is probable to