Big Problems in ‘Little Berlin’: The Minuscule Village Separated in Two by the Cold War Era

A stream so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a village for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own division was torn down, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people started memorialising their history. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not completely ready. Addressing the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the way of the locals drinking in the same inn, going to the identical church and placing their children to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russians erected wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the whole village, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw across the stream. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to display ID, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were banned. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a western villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I was told accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his working life developing it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how what length of wall they desired to keep. They selected a portion on the west edge, near where one of their own succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

2 guard towers are preserved alongside a set of tableaux depicting the most impactful moments in the community’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents needed special permission to care for their fields; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not both, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Background

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but over twice as many persons (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. the director informs me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They neither backed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 came to visit annually, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Modern Evolutions

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