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

An creek so narrow you barely got your ankles wet separated a village for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people set about documenting their past. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the residents socializing in the same inn, visiting the identical religious building and sending their young ones to the very same learning center.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the entire hamlet, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to withdraw across the brook. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to display ID, even though everyone understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was added to a East German secret police watch list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian local who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how what length of structure they desired to keep. They selected a stretch on the west fringe, close to where one of their own was able to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, subsequently the border was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Installations

A pair of watchtowers are maintained in addition to a set of tableaux illustrating the most impactful dates in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, the director lists the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required special permission to look after their crops; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but never the two, for fear that they attempted to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but over twice as many persons (well over 300) died seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They neither backed the socialist government nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 came to visit annually, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and large vehicle area – is probable to