Major Difficulties in ‘Little Berlin’: This Small Settlement Separated in Half by the Cold War Era

An stream so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a community for more than four decades. By an accident of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own wall was opened, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers set about commemorating their heritage. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not completely prepared. Speaking to the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which ripped households apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the residents drinking in the same inn, visiting the same place of worship and placing their children to the same school.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Russians erected wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the entire hamlet, establishing their command in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to pull back across the brook. For a time, residents could continue to hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to show identification, even though each person was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were banned. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a West German local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wanted to maintain. They chose a section on the western edge, adjacent to where a local resident managed to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Structures

Two observation towers are conserved in addition to a collection of displays illustrating the most dramatic dates in the community’s past. As we walk, the director lists the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their produce; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but never the pair, for fear that they sought to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Context

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but in excess of two times more persons (more than 300) died attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 visited each year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Current Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and big car park – is expected to