Big Difficulties in ‘Miniature Berlin’: This Minuscule Settlement Split in Two by the Cold War Era

A creek so shallow you barely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own division was opened, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of local people started memorialising their past. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely finished. Addressing the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity never stood in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the very same tavern, attending the very same religious building and sending their kids to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Then came the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russians put up timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the entire community, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a time, residents could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to display identification, even though all was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his professional career building it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wished to maintain. They opted for a section on the Bavarian edge, near where a local resident managed to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was substantially fortified.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are conserved alongside a collection of displays showing the most dramatic moments in the community’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed special permission to look after their produce; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but never the pair, lest they attempted to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Background

The border between West Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but in excess of double the number people (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They neither backed the communist regime nor fought it, the director explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to see every year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Modern Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and big car park – is likely to