Big Trouble in ‘Tiny Berlin’: This Minuscule Settlement Divided in Half by the Cold War

A brook so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a community for over four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people began memorialising their past. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Telling the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel division, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals drinking in the very same tavern, visiting the identical religious building and placing their young ones to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians put up wooden posts by the brook. For a year they took over the whole hamlet, creating their command in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to retreat across the brook. For a while, villagers could continue to jump across, though as controls increased they were obliged to present identity papers, even though each person understood who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the east side waving and shouting were banned. A local woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a West German resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me narratives including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life creating it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how how long a section structure they desired to preserve. They opted for a portion on the western fringe, near where one of their own was able to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the border was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Structures

Two guard towers are conserved together with a series of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic events in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to look after their fields; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but not both, lest they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Context

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but in excess of double the number people (well over 300) died attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between two political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor opposed it, the director explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. About 15k came to visit every year, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a TV series about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Modern Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, store, movie theater and sizable car park – is probable to