Big Problems in ‘Little Berlin’: This Small Hamlet Separated in Two by the Cold War

An stream so narrow you hardly got your feet wet split a village for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. American soldiers dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of local people began memorialising their heritage. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Speaking to the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals gathering in the very same tavern, attending the same religious building and sending their kids to the identical educational institution.

After the War Division

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they occupied the whole community, setting up their headquarters in a house on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a period, villagers could continue to jump across, though as controls increased they were obliged to display ID, although everyone understood who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the east side waving and yelling were forbidden. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian local who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his working life creating it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how much wall they wanted to maintain. They selected a stretch on the west perimeter, near where one of their own was able to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the border was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of observation towers are preserved together with a series of tableaux depicting the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s past. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their fields; the spouse could work the combine harvester but not both, in case they tried to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of double the number persons (more than 300) were killed trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They neither supported the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15k came to see every year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Current Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and big car park – is likely to