Serious Difficulties in ‘Miniature Berlin’: This Tiny Village Split in Two by the Cold War

A brook so low you scarcely got your feet wet divided a community for in excess of four decades. By an accident of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people set about documenting their heritage. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the identical tavern, attending the identical religious building and enrolling their kids to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians installed timber poles by the brook. For a year they took over the entire village, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to show identification, even though all understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could continue to observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a western local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his working life building it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how much wall they desired to preserve. They selected a portion on the west fringe, near where a villager managed to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Installations

Two watchtowers are maintained alongside a series of displays depicting the most dramatic events in the community’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to look after their produce; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but not the two, for fear that they tried to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but in excess of double the number people (well over 300) died trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director tells me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand visited every year, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and big parking lot – is probable to