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

An stream so shallow you barely got your feet wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of villagers began documenting their past. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Telling the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel split, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which tore households asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents drinking in the very same tavern, visiting the same church and enrolling their children to the identical learning center.

After the War Division

Then came the second world war. The moment they came, the Russians put up wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the entire community, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to pull back back over the brook. For a time, residents could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were required to display identification, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was put on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian local who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his working life building it. Locals were asked early on about how what length of barrier they desired to maintain. They opted for a section on the western perimeter, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the border was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of guard towers are conserved alongside a series of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic moments in the community’s history. As we move, Lebergen details the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their produce; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but not both, lest they sought to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Background

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but more than twice as many people (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They did not backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to visit annually, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and big car park – is probable to