Big Problems in ‘Miniature Berlin’: This Tiny Hamlet Separated in Half by the Cold War Era
An brook so low you barely got your feet wet separated a village for in excess of four decades. By an accident of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.
Commemorating History
A few months after their own division was opened, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people began documenting their history. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Addressing the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”
“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”
Past Context
Right from its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the identical tavern, visiting the identical church and enrolling their children to the very same educational institution.
Post-War Division
Next arrived the World War II. The moment they appeared, the Russians installed timber poles by the stream. For a year they seized the whole community, setting up their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to pull back back over the brook. For a time, locals could continue to cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to display identity papers, even though each person knew who they were, and to come back at evening.
Intensification of Frontier Controls
Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to view each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were prohibited. One woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “good new year”.
Heritage Site Development
I heard stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were polled early on about how much barrier they wanted to preserve. They selected a portion on the west edge, close to where a local resident was able to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the border was heavily fortified.
Preserved Structures
Two guard towers are preserved in addition to a series of displays depicting the most impactful events in the community’s chronicle. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers had to obtain specific authorization to look after their crops; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but never the two, lest they tried to flee. Soldiers stood watch.
Wider Background
The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of two times more persons (well over 300) died attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.
Community Life
The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern explains.
Visitors
For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 came to visit annually, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.
Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.
Current Evolutions
The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and sizable car park – is probable to