Serious Difficulties in ‘Little Berlin’: This Small Village Divided in Half by the Cold War Period

An brook so shallow you barely got your feet wet split a community for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a group of residents set about commemorating their history. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, 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 was not entirely finished. Telling the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal split, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the way of the residents socializing in the identical tavern, attending the identical place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the very same educational institution.

After the War Division

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the complete community, setting up their command in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to retreat back over the creek. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to display identity papers, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a West German resident who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how much wall they desired to preserve. They selected a portion on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where one of their own was able to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Structures

2 guard towers are conserved in addition to a collection of exhibits illustrating the most significant events in the village’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen lists the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to tend to their fields; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but never the two, for fear that they sought to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but more than two times more individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director tells me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They neither supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. Roughly 15,000 came to visit annually, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and big parking lot – is probable to