Major Trouble in ‘Tiny Berlin’: The Minuscule Settlement Split in Half by the Cold War Era

A brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a settlement for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers began documenting their history. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal division, which tore families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which tore households asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the residents drinking in the identical pub, visiting the identical church and enrolling their young ones to the very same school.

After the War Division

Then came the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russians installed wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the entire village, creating their control center in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat across the creek. For a while, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were required to show identity papers, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were banned. A female resident was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his occupational time building it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how what length of structure they wished to preserve. They opted for a portion on the western edge, near where a villager managed to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Structures

A pair of observation towers are conserved alongside a set of exhibits showing the most dramatic dates in the village’s history. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the rules: no one could approach 5km of the border. Farmers required specific authorization to look after their crops; the spouse could work the combine harvester but not the pair, lest they attempted to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but over twice as many individuals (more than 300) were killed trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor fought it, the director states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. About 15k visited annually, optical devices in possession, to stare – 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 broadcast production about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and big vehicle area – is likely to