🔗 Share this article Major Difficulties in ‘Tiny Berlin’: This Small Hamlet Separated in Two by the Cold War Period An brook so low you hardly got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin. Commemorating History Months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers set about commemorating their past. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore households asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.” “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.” Bygone Origins Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk never stood in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the identical tavern, visiting the very same religious building and enrolling their kids to the same school. Following WWII Split Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Russians erected wooden posts by the stream. For a year they occupied the complete community, setting up their control center in a building on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to withdraw back over the creek. For a time, villagers could continue to jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to display identity papers, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark. Increase of Frontier Controls Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could still view each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were banned. One woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for replying “back at you” to a West German resident who said her “prosperous new year”. Museum Development I was told accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career building it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of structure they desired to maintain. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a local resident managed to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was heavily reinforced. Maintained Buildings Two guard towers are maintained alongside a set of exhibits showing the most significant dates in the village’s history. As we move, the director enumerates the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to look after their fields; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but never both, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard. Larger Background The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but over two times more people (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful. Community Life The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They neither backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states. Visitors For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. Approximately 15k came to visit every year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head. 25 years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention. Present-Day Developments The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is expected to