Big Problems in ‘Tiny Berlin’: The Small Hamlet Divided in Half by the Cold War

An stream so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people started documenting their history. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely finished. Telling the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which ripped families asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled households apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the very same tavern, attending the identical religious building and placing their young ones to the identical school.

After the War Split

Then came the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the whole hamlet, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to pull back back over the brook. For a period, locals could continue to cross over, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to display identity papers, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could continue to observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were forbidden. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his professional career building it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wanted to preserve. They chose a portion on the west fringe, close to where a villager was able to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was heavily fortified.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are preserved in addition to a set of displays depicting the most significant dates in the hamlet’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to care for their fields; the spouse could use the combine harvester but not the two, in case they sought to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but in excess of two times more persons (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director informs me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Village Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They did not backed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. About 15k came to visit annually, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Modern Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is expected to