Serious Problems in ‘Miniature Berlin’: The Minuscule Settlement Separated in Two by the Cold War Era

A creek so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet split a village for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about commemorating their past. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants socializing in the same tavern, attending the same church and enrolling their young ones to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Then came the World War II. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the complete hamlet, setting up their command in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to retreat across the creek. For a period, residents could still hop over, though as controls increased they were required to show identity papers, even though each person knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could continue to view each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were banned. One woman was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a western resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I heard stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his professional career developing it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of structure they desired to keep. They selected a section on the west perimeter, near where one of their own managed to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

Two observation towers are maintained alongside a set of displays illustrating the most significant events in the community’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to care for their fields; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but never the pair, for fear that they tried to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Background

The border between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but in excess of two times more persons (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adapted to living in the grey zone between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They neither backed the communist regime nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. About 15,000 visited annually, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Modern Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, store, cinema room and large car park – is expected to