Serious Difficulties in ‘Little Berlin’: This Tiny Hamlet Divided in Half by the Cold War Era

A brook so low you hardly got your feet wet split a community for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own wall was opened, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people started documenting their past. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Telling the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel division, which pulled households asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for giving all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk did not stand in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the identical pub, going to the very same church and placing their children to the same learning center.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the complete hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a time, residents could continue to jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to present identity papers, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “back at you” to a West German villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wished to keep. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a local resident was able to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Structures

Two observation towers are preserved alongside a series of exhibits illustrating the most significant events in the village’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to look after their fields; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but not the two, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but over double the number people (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to see every year, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Current Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is probable to