Serious Problems in ‘Little Berlin’: The Small Hamlet Divided in Two by the Cold War Era
An creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet separated a village for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.
Preserving Historical Events
A few months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people began documenting their heritage. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely ready. Addressing the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”
“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into aliens.”
Historical Background
Starting at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the locals gathering in the very same pub, attending the very same religious building and placing their children to the identical school.
After the War Separation
Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the creek. For a year they seized the complete community, setting up their command in a building on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a time, villagers could continue to hop over, though as controls increased they were obliged to present ID, although each person was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.
Escalation of Boundary Measures
Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing 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 slopes, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were banned. One woman was added to a Stasi watch list for replying “likewise” to a western villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.
Museum Creation
It was related to me narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his working life creating it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how much structure they wanted to keep. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian fringe, near where one of their own managed to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was substantially strengthened.
Maintained Buildings
Two observation towers are maintained together with a set of tableaux showing the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to look after their crops; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not both, in case they sought to flee. Armed guards kept guard.
Broader Context
The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but in excess of two times more people (well over 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross failed.
Hamlet Life
The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They neither supported the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.
Tourism
For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit each year, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.
25 years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, caused new attention.
Modern Developments
The opening of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and big parking lot – is likely to
