🔗 Share this article Serious Difficulties in ‘Miniature Berlin’: The Minuscule Settlement Divided in Two by the Cold War Era A creek so shallow you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin. Memorialising Historical Events A few months after their own division was torn down, and before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of residents set about commemorating their past. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Speaking to the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.” “You were observers of an inhuman split, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.” Past Background Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the same inn, visiting the very same religious building and placing their kids to the same school. Following WWII Division Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russians erected wooden posts by the brook. For a year they took over the complete community, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat back over the creek. For a period, residents could continue to hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to display identity papers, even though all understood who they were, and to go back at night. Intensification of Frontier Controls Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still see each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were banned. One woman was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a western villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”. Heritage Site Establishment I heard accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his working life creating it. Villagers were polled early on about how what length of wall they wanted to maintain. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a villager was able to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the frontier was heavily strengthened. Preserved Structures A pair of watchtowers are preserved in addition to a series of exhibits showing the most dramatic moments in the community’s chronicle. As we walk, the director enumerates the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their produce; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but not the two, for fear that they attempted to escape. Armed guards stood watch. Larger Context The frontier between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but more than two times more people (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful. Hamlet Existence Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director explains. Interest For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit every year, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister. Twenty five years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity. Modern Developments The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and sizable car park – is expected to