Serious Problems in ‘Tiny Berlin’: This Tiny Settlement Divided in Half by the Cold War Period

A brook so low you hardly got your feet wet split a community for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was opened, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people set about memorialising their past. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Addressing the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Past Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the same pub, going to the same church and placing their children to the very same learning center.

Post-War Division

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they appeared, the Russians installed wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they seized the whole village, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a while, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to show ID, although all knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. One woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a West German villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his professional career developing it. Villagers were asked early on about how how long a section wall they wished to preserve. They selected a stretch on the western perimeter, close to where one of their own managed to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are maintained alongside a series of displays depicting the most dramatic events in the village’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents required special permission to care for their fields; the partner could operate the combine harvester but never both, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but in excess of double the number people (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They neither supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 came to visit every year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Current Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and sizable car park – is expected to