Major Problems in ‘Miniature Berlin’: This Minuscule Hamlet Split in Two by the Cold War

A creek so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a village for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own division was torn down, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of residents began commemorating their history. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled households into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the residents drinking in the identical pub, attending the same place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the very same school.

Post-War Division

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russians put up wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they seized the complete hamlet, establishing their control center in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as controls increased they were forced to show ID, although all knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a West German resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his occupational time creating it. Residents were consulted early on about how what length of structure they desired to preserve. They chose a stretch on the western perimeter, close to where a local resident managed to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was significantly fortified.

Preserved Structures

Two guard towers are preserved alongside a collection of tableaux depicting the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen lists the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to care for their produce; the partner could work the harvesting machine but not the two, in case they attempted to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but over two times more individuals (well over 300) were killed trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They did not supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About 15k came to see annually, binoculars in hand, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and large vehicle area – is likely to