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Depopulated towns in Germany’s ex-communist east have come up with a novel scheme to bring back life: offering people several weeks of super-cheap housing to give would-be residents a taste of the place.<\/p>\n
The “trial-living” scheme aims to revitalise half-deserted communities as Germany nears the 35th anniversary of its reunification on October 3.<\/p>\n
One of those giving it a shot is Weslawa Goeller, 50, a kindergarten educator with a two-year-old daughter who is getting to know the small town of Guben on the Polish border.<\/p>\n
Hailing from the much bigger western German city of Mainz, she said she found the quiet streets unsettling at first: “Since I arrived, I feel like I never see anyone.”<\/p>\n
“But it’s green and quiet,” she added, warming to the town’s tranquil charms, as well as the free childcare for her toddler.<\/p>\n
“I could easily work here as an educator,” she told AFP, sitting at a terrace cafe.<\/p>\n
Goeller was among 16 people who came over the summer to discover the town and its services under a scheme run by local authorities, a tourism agency and real estate companies.<\/p>\n
They paid just 100 euros ($118) in weekly rent for a maximum of four weeks, with a view to settling there.<\/p>\n
While finding a reasonably priced flat in Berlin has become a real struggle, many properties in Guben can be rented for just five to seven euros per square metre.<\/p>\n
“Old trees like me are hard to uproot,” said Goeller. “But I might decide to move here.”<\/p>\n
– ‘Bomb for economy’ –<\/p>\n
Like many places in the east, Guben hit hard times in the years after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.<\/p>\n
As the Soviet-backed regime collapsed and outdated businesses closed across the east, waves of unemployment sparked population flight and a sense of social dislocation.<\/p>\n
Scars from that turbulent era and an enduring east-west wealth gap are often cited as contributing to the surging popularity of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the east.<\/p>\n
While large cities like Dresden and Leipzig are growing, smaller eastern towns continue to see young people and women leaving, said Tim Leibert, a researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Geography.<\/p>\n
The trend threatens to become “a bomb for the German economy”, he said.<\/p>\n
Eastern Germany could lose between eight and 16 percent of its population over the next 20 years, according to the statistics institute Destatis.<\/p>\n
Guben also saw its population plummet from around 31,000 in 1990 to just 16,000 today.<\/p>\n
Its slogan, “A town where people stay”, contrasts sharply with the empty streets and blank advertising spaces.<\/p>\n
– Overcoming prejudice –<\/p>\n
Some of the newcomers like it that way — among them former social worker Anika Franze, 38, who gave up the “Berlin party scene” to move here last year.<\/p>\n
She now works for the trial-living initiative, persuading others to move to her adopted town.<\/p>\n
For her, it was essential to test life in Guben for several weeks before making the move.<\/p>\n
“Not having to decide immediately whether to move is a very modern concept, a bit like a 30-day right of return,” she said.<\/p>\n
Kerstin Geilich, 61, the head of the Guben repopulation project, said she remembers the\u00a0trauma of the 1990s when the east German economy collapsed.<\/p>\n
The situation in the region has improved since then, she said, with factories reopening and jobs available in other sectors such as healthcare.<\/p>\n
But prejudices remain difficult to overcome, according to Geilich. “It’s hard to make (people) understand that you can find a good job here today.”<\/p>\n
– ‘Tragedy of the 1990s’ –<\/p>\n
Thirty kilometres (48 miles) north of Guben, the town of Eisenhuettenstadt launched a similar programme this year, to help overcome what Mayor Frank Balzer calls “the tragedy of the 1990s”.<\/p>\n
The town was built from scratch in 1950 as a hub for communist East Germany’s steel industry and was originally known as Stalinstadt.<\/p>\n
It has lost half its population since reunification, and its historic blast furnaces, taken over by Arcelor Mittal, now operate with one quarter of the former workforce.<\/p>\n
One person considering a move to Eisenhuettenstadt is IT consultant Melanie Henninger, who hails from the east but now lives in the west German city of Bremen.<\/p>\n
“I would like to contribute to society here, for example by training older people in digital technology,” she told AFP during a recent visit.<\/p>\n
Henninger said she “tries not to have any preconceptions” over the strength of the far right in the region and that instead “I have to give this place a chance”.<\/p>\n
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