Big Trouble in ‘Tiny Berlin’: This Tiny Hamlet Divided in Half by the Cold War Period

A brook so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a settlement for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a group of residents started commemorating their history. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which tore households apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity did not stand in the way of the locals socializing in the same inn, visiting the identical church and placing their young ones to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Then came the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russians erected wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they seized the entire community, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to pull back across the stream. For a time, villagers could continue to cross over, though as restrictions increased they were required to show identity papers, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were banned. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a western villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how much barrier they desired to keep. They selected a stretch on the west fringe, close to where a local resident succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Preserved Structures

2 observation towers are maintained together with a set of displays showing the most impactful moments in the village’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers had to obtain special permission to look after their crops; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but more than twice as many people (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of site of interest. About 15k came to visit each year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and large car park – is expected to