Big Trouble in ‘Miniature Berlin’: The Minuscule Village Split in Two by the Cold War Era

A stream so shallow you barely got your feet wet split a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, 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 barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own division was breached, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of residents began documenting their past. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore families apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

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

Historical Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk did not stand in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the same pub, going to the same church and enrolling their children to the very same school.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the complete village, establishing their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to pull back back over the creek. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to present ID, although all knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were banned. One woman was put on a Stasi watch list for answering “likewise” to a western villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his occupational time creating it. Residents were polled early on about how what length of structure they wanted to preserve. They selected a portion on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a villager succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Structures

2 watchtowers are conserved in addition to a series of exhibits showing the most significant moments in the village’s history. As we stroll, the director details the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed special permission to tend to their fields; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but never the two, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but over twice as many people (more than 300) were killed attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit each year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Current Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and large parking lot – is expected to