Big Problems in ‘Miniature Berlin’: The Minuscule Hamlet Separated in Half by the Cold War Era
An brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.
Commemorating Historical Events
A few months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers started memorialising their history. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely finished. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”
“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned local residents into strangers.”
Bygone Background
Even at its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity never stood in the path of the locals drinking in the identical pub, going to the same religious building and sending their kids to the same school.
After the War Split
Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the creek. For a year they took over the whole hamlet, creating their command in a building on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to pull back back over the brook. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were forced to present identity papers, although all was aware who they were, and to return at evening.
Increase of Frontier Measures
After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the east side waving and yelling were prohibited. One woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a West German local who greeted her “happy new year”.
Exhibition Center Establishment
It was related to me stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his working life developing it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wished to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the west edge, close to where one of their own managed to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the border was heavily fortified.
Maintained Structures
Two watchtowers are conserved alongside a series of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic moments in the village’s history. As we walk, Lebergen lists the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required particular approval to care for their crops; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but not both, lest they attempted to escape. Soldiers were on duty.
Wider Context
The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but over twice as many people (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.
Village Existence
Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between two political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.
Interest
For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to visit every year, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.
Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.
Current Evolutions
The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and big car park – is likely to