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

An stream so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a community for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own division was breached, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people began documenting their past. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Telling the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals gathering in the same pub, going to the identical place of worship and placing their kids to the identical school.

After the War Split

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russians put up wood stakes by the creek. For a year they occupied the complete village, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to pull back across the creek. For a time, locals could continue to hop over, though as restrictions increased they were required to display identification, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were banned. One woman was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a West German villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I heard accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his professional career developing it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how much barrier they wished to preserve. They selected a section on the west edge, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Installations

A pair of observation towers are conserved alongside a series of exhibits depicting the most dramatic events in the village’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to care for their fields; the partner could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, lest they attempted to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but more than twice as many persons (well over 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They neither backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a type of destination. About 15,000 visited each year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and large parking lot – is probable to