Big Difficulties in ‘Tiny Berlin’: The Tiny Settlement Divided in Two by the Cold War Era

A stream so narrow you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for more than four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about commemorating their heritage. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the path of the residents drinking in the same inn, attending the same religious building and sending their children to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the creek. For a year they took over the entire hamlet, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to retreat across the stream. For a time, locals could continue to cross over, though as restrictions increased they were required to display identification, although each person knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a West German resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wished to keep. They opted for a section on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own was able to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Structures

2 watchtowers are preserved in addition to a series of exhibits illustrating the most impactful moments in the community’s history. As we walk, the director enumerates the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to look after their crops; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, lest they tried to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of double the number people (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director tells me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They did not backed the East German authorities nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 came to visit every year, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and large parking lot – is probable to