Serious Difficulties in ‘Little Berlin’: This Tiny Village Separated in Two by the Cold War Era

A brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet split a village for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, 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 dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers began memorialising their history. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely ready. Addressing the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled households apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the residents drinking in the same tavern, visiting the identical religious building and sending their young ones to the very same school.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians put up timber poles by the brook. For a year they seized the entire village, establishing their headquarters in a house on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to withdraw back over the brook. For a time, villagers could continue to hop over, though as controls tightened they were forced to show identity papers, even though everyone knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could continue to observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were banned. One woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for answering “back at you” to a West German villager who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his working life developing it. Locals were consulted early on about how much barrier they wanted to preserve. They selected a stretch on the west fringe, close to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the border was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Installations

Two observation towers are maintained together with a series of exhibits illustrating the most impactful dates in the community’s past. As we walk, Lebergen lists the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents required particular approval to tend to their crops; the partner could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) were killed trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor fought it, the director explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. About 15,000 came to visit each year, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Modern Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and big vehicle area – is probable to