Major Difficulties in ‘Miniature Berlin’: This Tiny Hamlet Separated in Two by the Cold War Era

An stream so shallow you hardly got your feet wet separated a settlement for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own division was torn down, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers began commemorating their heritage. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Telling the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk never stood in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the very same pub, attending the same place of worship and placing their kids to the very same school.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the brook. For a year they took over the complete village, setting up their command in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to withdraw across the brook. For a time, villagers could continue to jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to show ID, although everyone was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The locals could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a western local who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Residents were consulted early on about how much barrier they wanted to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the western perimeter, close to where a local resident succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

Two observation towers are conserved alongside a set of exhibits depicting the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed special permission to care for their fields; the partner could use the harvesting machine but never the pair, in case they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but in excess of double the number persons (exceeding 300) were killed trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of destination. About fifteen thousand visited every year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and big car park – is likely to