Big Trouble in ‘Miniature Berlin’: This Minuscule Hamlet Split in Half by the Cold War Period

A brook so low you hardly got your feet wet split a settlement for over four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was opened, and before their country had become one in 1990, a collection of residents set about documenting their past. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Telling the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the identical inn, visiting the identical religious building and placing their young ones to the same school.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the complete hamlet, setting up their command in a house on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to pull back back over the brook. For a while, villagers could continue to jump across, though as limitations increased they were forced to display identification, although everyone knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could continue to observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were forbidden. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a western villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career creating it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how what length of structure they wished to keep. They chose a section on the west fringe, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was significantly fortified.

Preserved Installations

A pair of watchtowers are maintained alongside a collection of exhibits illustrating the most significant moments in the hamlet’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required particular approval to tend to their fields; the partner could work the harvesting machine but not both, lest they tried to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but over twice as many people (well over 300) died seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They neither supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k came to see every year, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Modern Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is expected to