Major Problems in ‘Miniature Berlin’: The Minuscule Settlement Split in Two by the Cold War

An stream so shallow you barely got your feet wet separated a village for in excess of four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was breached, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of residents began commemorating their heritage. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Telling the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the residents socializing in the same inn, visiting the identical religious building and enrolling their children to the very same school.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Russians erected timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the entire community, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to pull back across the stream. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were required to display identity papers, even though each person was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the east side waving and calling out were banned. One woman was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I was told stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his professional career building it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wanted to keep. They chose a section on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a villager succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was significantly fortified.

Preserved Buildings

Two guard towers are maintained in addition to a set of displays showing the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director details the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required particular approval to look after their crops; the partner could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, for fear that they attempted to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but in excess of twice as many individuals (more than 300) died seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Roughly 15,000 came to see every year, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and large parking lot – is expected to