Serious Trouble in ‘Miniature Berlin’: The Small Village Separated in Half by the Cold War Era

An creek so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a village for more than four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of residents began documenting their history. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Addressing the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the residents socializing in the identical tavern, attending the same religious building and sending their kids to the very same school.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the entire hamlet, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to withdraw back over the stream. For a while, residents could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to show identity papers, even though each person knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could continue to view each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was added to a Stasi watch list for responding “back at you” to a western villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his working life creating it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how what length of structure they wished to preserve. They chose a section on the Bavarian edge, close to where a local resident managed to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the border was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are maintained in addition to a collection of displays illustrating the most impactful events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed specific authorization to look after their crops; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but never the pair, in case they tried to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but more than double the number persons (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They did not endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. About fifteen thousand came to see every year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Current Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and large vehicle area – is probable to