Serious Trouble in ‘Little Berlin’: The Small Settlement Separated in Half by the Cold War Period

A brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a village for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own division was torn down, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people started commemorating their heritage. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the identical inn, visiting the same church and sending their children to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the brook. For a year they occupied the complete village, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back across the creek. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were required to display identity papers, although all was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a western local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his working life building it. Villagers were asked early on about how what length of structure they wanted to preserve. They chose a portion on the western edge, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

Two observation towers are preserved alongside a series of exhibits showing the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen lists the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required particular approval to care for their fields; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but never the two, for fear that they tried to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but in excess of two times more people (more than 300) were killed attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. About 15,000 came to see each year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and sizable car park – is likely to