Big Difficulties in ‘Little Berlin’: This Small Hamlet Divided in Two by the Cold War Period

A brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was breached, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents started documenting their heritage. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely ready. Telling the residents who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel division, which ripped families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the way of the locals drinking in the very same pub, going to the same church and placing their children to the identical school.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians erected timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the entire community, creating their control center in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to pull back back over the brook. For a time, villagers could continue to hop over, though as controls tightened they were required to display identity papers, even though each person knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were banned. One woman was added to a Stasi watch list for replying “likewise” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his working life building it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how much wall they desired to maintain. They opted for a portion on the west perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident managed to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Installations

A pair of guard towers are conserved alongside a collection of exhibits showing the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, the director details the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required special permission to care for their fields; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but not the pair, lest they attempted to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Context

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but over double the number people (more than 300) died trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between two belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor fought it, the director states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see annually, optical devices in hand, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and big car park – is likely to