Serious Problems in ‘Little Berlin’: This Minuscule Hamlet Divided in Half by the Cold War Period

An stream so low you hardly got your feet wet separated a community for in excess of four decades. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own division was breached, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of residents set about commemorating their history. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely ready. Speaking to the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal division, which ripped families apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for giving all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the residents gathering in the very same inn, going to the same religious building and sending their kids to the same learning center.

Post-War Division

Then came the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the complete village, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to withdraw across the stream. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to show identity papers, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were banned. A female resident was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a western local who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they wanted to preserve. They chose a portion on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Structures

A pair of guard towers are conserved in addition to a series of displays showing the most significant moments in the hamlet’s past. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required particular approval to look after their produce; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Background

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but in excess of twice as many people (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They neither backed the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to see every year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Modern Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and large vehicle area – is likely to