Major Problems in ‘Tiny Berlin’: This Tiny Settlement Divided in Half by the Cold War Era

A brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet separated a community for over four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents set about memorialising their past. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Telling the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

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

Bygone Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity did not stand in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the same pub, going to the same religious building and sending their kids to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the entire hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to pull back back over the stream. For a time, locals could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to display identification, even though each person knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could continue to see each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a western villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his working life developing it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how what length of barrier they desired to preserve. They selected a portion on the western fringe, near where one of their own was able to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was heavily fortified.

Maintained Buildings

Two guard towers are conserved together with a set of tableaux depicting the most significant dates in the hamlet’s past. As we move, the director enumerates the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their fields; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but not the pair, in case they sought to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but more than twice as many people (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director tells me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. About 15k came to see annually, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Current Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, store, film screening area and big parking lot – is likely to