Big Difficulties in ‘Tiny Berlin’: The Small Village Separated in Two by the Cold War
An creek so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a community for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.
Preserving Historical Events
Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers began memorialising their heritage. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Addressing the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”
“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”
Past Origins
Right from its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the way of the residents socializing in the same inn, attending the identical church and sending their children to the identical school.
After the War Separation
Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they seized the whole hamlet, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as controls became stricter they were required to display identity papers, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to come back at evening.
Intensification of Boundary Measures
Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could continue to see each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were banned. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a West German villager who said her “good new year”.
Heritage Site Creation
I was told accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life creating it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how much wall they wanted to maintain. They opted for a section on the western fringe, near where a villager managed to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was substantially reinforced.
Preserved Installations
2 watchtowers are preserved in addition to a set of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Lebergen lists the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to look after their fields; the partner could operate the agricultural equipment but not the pair, in case they attempted to escape. Soldiers kept guard.
Larger Context
The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but more than two times more persons (more than 300) died attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.
Community Existence
The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They neither supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director explains.
Interest
For tourists, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to visit annually, binoculars in possession, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.
Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, led to new attention.
Present-Day Evolutions
The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and big parking lot – is probable to
