Major Problems in ‘Tiny Berlin’: The Tiny Village Split in Half by the Cold War Period

A stream so low you hardly got your feet wet separated a village for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own division was opened, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a group of residents started commemorating their history. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely finished. Addressing the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which tore families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk never stood in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the identical inn, attending the very same religious building and sending their kids to the identical educational institution.

After the War Division

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the whole hamlet, creating their headquarters in a building on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to pull back across the stream. For a time, residents could continue to jump across, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to show identification, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The locals could continue to view each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were banned. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his working life creating it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the west perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own managed to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

Two observation towers are conserved together with a set of displays showing the most impactful events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, the director enumerates the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to care for their fields; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but never the two, in case they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of two times more persons (exceeding 300) died attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They neither backed the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to see every year, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Present-Day Changes

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