Major Trouble in ‘Tiny Berlin’: The Small Village Separated in Two by the Cold War

A creek so low you scarcely got your feet wet separated a community for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about memorialising their history. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

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

Past Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the identical tavern, attending the very same place of worship and placing their young ones to the identical school.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the whole community, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a time, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to display identity papers, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The locals could still view each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were banned. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “back at you” to a West German villager who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time creating it. Residents were consulted early on about how much structure they desired to preserve. They chose a stretch on the western fringe, close to where a local resident was able to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was significantly fortified.

Conserved Installations

Two observation towers are conserved alongside a series of displays showing the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen details the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents required particular approval to care for their crops; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but never both, lest they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but over two times more persons (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. the director tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They did not backed the communist regime nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of destination. Approximately 15,000 visited annually, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and big parking lot – is likely to