Serious Trouble in ‘Miniature Berlin’: This Minuscule Hamlet Split in Two by the Cold War Period

An stream so narrow you barely got your feet wet split a settlement for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own wall was opened, and before their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about commemorating their heritage. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Telling the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the very same pub, going to the very same religious building and placing their young ones to the identical educational institution.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the complete hamlet, creating their control center in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to retreat back over the stream. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were required to display identification, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could continue to observe each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. One woman was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a West German villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his working life building it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They chose a portion on the western edge, near where a local resident was able to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the border was heavily fortified.

Maintained Installations

A pair of observation towers are conserved together with a collection of displays showing the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required particular approval to look after their crops; the partner could work the harvesting machine but not the pair, for fear that they sought to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but in excess of double the number people (more than 300) died trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor fought it, the director states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. About 15,000 came to visit every year, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and big parking lot – is likely to