Serious Trouble in ‘Tiny Berlin’: This Tiny Village Separated in Half by the Cold War

An stream so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a community for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own division was opened, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people began commemorating their history. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which tore relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity never stood in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the identical pub, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their young ones to the same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the complete community, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a while, residents could continue to hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to show identity papers, even though all knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a West German local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his working life building it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how much wall they wished to maintain. They chose a section on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a local resident was able to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are conserved in addition to a collection of displays illustrating the most significant dates in the community’s history. As we walk, Lebergen details the restrictions: nobody could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required particular approval to tend to their fields; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but never the two, lest they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Background

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but more than two times more persons (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They neither supported the communist regime nor fought it, the director explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand visited each year, binoculars in hand, to look – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Current Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is expected to