🔗 Share this article Serious Trouble in ‘Little Berlin’: The Small Village Split in Two by the Cold War Era An brook so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for over four decades. By an accident of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin. Preserving History A few months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of local people set about commemorating their heritage. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.” “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore relatives into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.” Bygone Background Right from its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk never stood in the manner of the locals socializing in the very same tavern, visiting the identical church and sending their kids to the same school. Post-War Split Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they took over the entire community, setting up their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to retreat back over the brook. For a while, residents could continue to jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to present identity papers, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to go back at after dark. Intensification of Frontier Controls After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side waving and yelling were banned. A female resident was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a western local who wished her “prosperous new year”. Exhibition Center Establishment It was related to me accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his professional career building it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how what length of barrier they desired to maintain. They selected a portion on the west edge, near where a villager succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was heavily fortified. Conserved Installations A pair of watchtowers are maintained in addition to a series of displays illustrating the most significant moments in the village’s history. As we walk, the director details the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to care for their fields; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but never the two, in case they sought to escape. Armed guards stood watch. Larger Perspective The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but more than twice as many persons (exceeding 300) died seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful. Community Life The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They neither backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies. Visitors For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see each year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister. Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity. Current Developments The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is likely to