Serious Trouble in ‘Little Berlin’: The Small Village Divided in Two by the Cold War Period

A brook so shallow you barely got your feet wet split a community for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own division was torn down, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers began commemorating their history. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Telling the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled families apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

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

Bygone Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the identical inn, attending the identical church and placing their young ones to the very same school.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russians erected timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they seized the whole village, setting up their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were obliged to present ID, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at night.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was added to a East German secret police watch list for responding “back at you” to a West German resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I heard stories such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his working life developing it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wanted to maintain. They opted for a section on the Bavarian perimeter, near where a villager succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Installations

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a collection of displays depicting the most significant moments in the village’s history. As we move, Lebergen lists the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to look after their produce; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but not both, in case they sought to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but in excess of double the number persons (more than 300) were killed trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 visited annually, binoculars in hand, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Current Changes

The opening of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and large vehicle area – is probable to