Big Difficulties in ‘Little Berlin’: This Small Village Divided in Half by the Cold War Era
An stream so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a village for over four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.
Memorialising History
A few months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of local people began documenting their history. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early 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 division, which pulled families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”
“You were observers of an brutal split, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”
Historical Origins
Right from its creation in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the residents drinking in the same inn, visiting the same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the identical school.
After the War Division
Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the complete community, setting up their command in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to withdraw across the brook. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as controls increased they were required to display ID, even though each person understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.
Intensification of Border Restrictions
Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a western resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.
Museum Establishment
It was related to me stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how what length of wall they desired to keep. They chose a section on the west edge, adjacent to where a local resident was able to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the frontier was substantially strengthened.
Conserved Buildings
2 watchtowers are maintained together with a collection of exhibits showing the most impactful moments in the community’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to tend to their crops; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but never both, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.
Wider Context
The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but in excess of double the number people (more than 300) died trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.
Community Life
Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between two political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They did not supported the communist regime nor resisted it, the director clarifies.
Tourism
For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. Roughly 15k visited every year, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.
25 years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.
Current Evolutions
The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and large vehicle area – is probable to
