Major Trouble in ‘Tiny Berlin’: The Tiny Hamlet Split in Two by the Cold War Period

A creek so narrow you hardly got your feet wet split a community for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people set about memorialising their heritage. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore households apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

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

Historical Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the very same tavern, attending the very same church and placing their kids to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russians put up timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they seized the entire community, creating their command in a building on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to pull back across the brook. For a period, villagers could continue to hop over, though as limitations increased they were forced to show ID, although each person was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side waving and shouting were prohibited. One woman was added to a Stasi surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his working life creating it. Villagers were asked early on about how how long a section barrier they wished to maintain. They chose a portion on the western fringe, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of guard towers are maintained together with a set of tableaux showing the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, the director enumerates the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to tend to their produce; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but in excess of double the number people (exceeding 300) died attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They did not backed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. About 15,000 came to visit every year, binoculars in hand, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Current Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and big parking lot – is probable to