Big Difficulties in ‘Little Berlin’: This Small Village Divided in Two by the Cold War
A brook so narrow you barely got your ankles wet split a village for over four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.
Commemorating Historical Events
Several months after their own division was torn down, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers began commemorating their heritage. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Speaking to the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”
“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”
Bygone Background
Even at its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the identical inn, attending the very same place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the same learning center.
After the War Division
Next arrived the World War II. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the brook. For a year they occupied the entire village, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to pull back across the brook. For a time, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were obliged to show identification, even though each person was aware who they were, and to return at evening.
Increase of Boundary Controls
Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to view each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were banned. One woman was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a western local who said her “good new year”.
Exhibition Center Establishment
It was related to me narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Locals were polled early on about how how long a section wall they wanted to preserve. They opted for a portion on the western perimeter, close to where a villager succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the border was heavily fortified.
Maintained Structures
A pair of guard towers are conserved together with a collection of tableaux depicting the most dramatic events in the village’s history. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to care for their produce; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, in case they tried to flee. Armed guards stood watch.
Broader Background
The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but more than two times more individuals (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.
Community Existence
The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They neither supported the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.
Interest
For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of destination. Roughly 15k visited each year, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.
Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.
Modern Evolutions
The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and sizable car park – is probable to
