Serious Trouble in ‘Tiny Berlin’: This Minuscule Hamlet Divided in Half by the Cold War

An stream so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a community for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a group of residents set about memorialising their past. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel split, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the identical pub, attending the identical church and sending their children to the identical school.

Post-War Split

Then came the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Russians erected wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the complete hamlet, establishing their control center in a building on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a period, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to present identity papers, even though all understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were forbidden. One woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told narratives including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his occupational time building it. Locals were polled early on about how how long a section structure they desired to maintain. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, near where a villager managed to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of guard towers are conserved in addition to a collection of displays illustrating the most significant events in the community’s chronicle. As we walk, the director enumerates the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed particular approval to look after their fields; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but not both, in case they attempted to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The border between West Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but more than double the number individuals (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They neither backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k visited each year, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and large car park – is expected to