Big Difficulties in ‘Little Berlin’: The Small Settlement Split in Two by the Cold War Era
An creek so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a community for over four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.
Preserving the Past
Months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of residents set about memorialising their heritage. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Addressing the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”
“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which pulled households apart and turned local residents into aliens.”
Bygone Context
Starting at its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals drinking in the very same tavern, visiting the identical religious building and enrolling their kids to the same educational institution.
Post-War Split
Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they came, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the complete village, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to pull back across the creek. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as controls increased they were required to show identification, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.
Intensification of Boundary Restrictions
After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was added to a Stasi surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a western local who said her “prosperous new year”.
Exhibition Center Establishment
I was told accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his working life creating it. Residents were consulted early on about how what length of structure they desired to maintain. They selected a section on the western fringe, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the border was heavily fortified.
Maintained Structures
A pair of guard towers are preserved together with a collection of exhibits depicting the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain particular approval to care for their crops; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but not both, in case they sought to flee. Military personnel were on duty.
Larger Context
The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but in excess of double the number individuals (more than 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.
Hamlet Daily Living
The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.
Tourism
For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to visit each year, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.
Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.
Current Developments
The launch of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and large vehicle area – is probable to
