Serious Difficulties in ‘Little Berlin’: The Small Village Split in Two by the Cold War Era
An creek so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a community for over four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.
Commemorating History
Months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people started memorialising their history. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Addressing the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”
“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”
Historical Context
Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most renowned for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity never stood in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the same inn, visiting the identical church and sending their kids to the same learning center.
Post-War Division
Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russians installed timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the entire community, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to withdraw back over the creek. For a time, residents could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were forced to present identification, even though all was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.
Intensification of Border Controls
Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could continue to view each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for responding “same to you” to a western resident who said her “good new year”.
Museum Development
I heard accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wished to preserve. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian edge, near where one of their own succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the boundary was heavily reinforced.
Conserved Buildings
A pair of guard towers are maintained together with a set of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic events in the community’s history. As we move, the director details the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed special permission to care for their crops; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, lest they sought to escape. Soldiers were on duty.
Larger Background
The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but over two times more individuals (well over 300) were killed attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.
Community Existence
The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.
Visitors
For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. Approximately 15,000 came to visit annually, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.
Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.
Current Evolutions
The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and big vehicle area – is likely to
