Serious Problems in ‘Miniature Berlin’: The Small Settlement Separated in Half by the Cold War Era

An creek so low you hardly got your feet wet separated a village for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and before their country had become one in 1990, a group of villagers started documenting their history. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Telling the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore families apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were observers of an cruel division, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the residents drinking in the very same inn, attending the very same church and enrolling their young ones to the identical school.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russians erected wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they seized the entire community, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a while, locals could continue to hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to display ID, even though all knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were banned. One woman was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a West German local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his professional career building it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wished to preserve. They selected a portion on the western perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident managed to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was significantly fortified.

Preserved Installations

2 watchtowers are conserved together with a collection of exhibits depicting the most dramatic events in the village’s history. As we move, the director details the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required particular approval to tend to their fields; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but never the two, for fear that they sought to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but more than double the number people (well over 300) died trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 visited every year, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Current Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and large parking lot – is expected to