Experiencing Germany

Very few cities in Germany are as young as Eisenhüttenstadt in the eastern part of the state of Brandenburg, which will be celebrating its 55th anniversary in 2005. The city situated on the river Oder, however, prefers to looks forward rather than back. As one of the "shrinking cities" in the east of Germany, it now faces major challenges.

In the Oder-Spree district some 120 kilometres south-east of Berlin, there is a city close to the border with Poland which was planned both architecturally and ideologically on a drawing board. Eisenhüttenstadt was designed in an era in which the still young GDR was keen to cultivate home-grown heavy industry. At the Third Party Conference of the SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany), it was decided in July 1950 to build the Ironworks Combine East, or Eisenhüttenkombinat Ost (EKO), close to the town of Fürstenberg an der Oder. The combine was to produce steel using Polish coke and Ukrainian iron ore.

When the foundation stone for the first blast furnace was laid on 1 January 1951, building also began on a residential town, the GDR's first socialist city. The first building complexes, which were constructed on the basis of drawings by architect Kurt W. Leucht, who had overall responsibility for planning the town, today represent one of the biggest ensembles of 1950s architecture. Blast furnace I was fired up for the first time in September 1951 – at almost the same time as the housing developments were officially handed over.

The Stalin fairy-tale

In May 1953 the EKO town was given a new name: Stalinstadt. Clearly, the GDR leadership had only realized somewhat late in the day that none of the new state's cities actually bore the name of the celebrated liberator. Steps were quickly taken to remedy this oversight, though in a very odd manner indeed.

The local newspaper contained a detailed report about how Stalin had inaugurated the people-owned factory and the residential housing developments on 7 May 1953: "His solemn mien gave way to a kindly, father-like expression. The wind plays gently with the silvery strands of his hair. Spring flowers cloaked in green raise their heads higher, and the blackbirds in the nearby forest sing more brightly: Stalin strides through the combine." The fact that Stalin was unable at this time either to stride with dignity or to look in a fatherly way, was deliberately ignored. "Wise Stalin, the great architect and builder of socialism", as Walter Ulbricht praised him at the time, had already passed away two months previously, on 5 March 1953.

However, the SED only honoured the Soviet dictator for a period of eight years. When criticism of Stalin was voiced under Khrushchev and the XXI Party Conference of the CPSU decided no longer to allow his mortal remains to lie side by side with Lenin's body, East Berlin felt compelled to act. It was decided quickly – in stark contrast to usual practice – to merge the socialist Stalinstadt with nearby Fürstenberg, a somewhat more bourgeois town, and to rename Stalinstadt Eisenhüttenstadt.

A dream of steel

In the following years, the city's development really took off. Numerous new, though architecturally speaking not particularly appealing housing developments – mainly mass-produced plattenbau buildings – were erected to house the city's more than 53,000 inhabitants in 1988. Incidentally, the 50,000 or so exhibits on display in the documentation centre Everyday Culture of the GDR in Eisenhüttenstadt give a very good insight into what life in the GDR at the time was like.

Following the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, the era of growth was over. For a long time it was uncertain whether the EKO would survive. The workers in Eisenhüttenstadt expressed their fears in strikes and demonstrations: "If the factory dies, the town will die too". On 1 January 1995, Eisenhüttenstadt was able for the time being to breathe a sigh of relief: the steel works was privatized, and the Belgian Cockerill Sambre corporation took over the new EKO Stahl GmbH. In 2002, the EKO became part of the world's largest steel manufacturer ARCELOR, employing around 2,500 people and another 2,500 were employed during the restructuring process of the enterprise.

Frustration in Schrottgorod

The fact that steel will for the time being continue to be produced in Eisenhüttenstadt is one of the few optimistic tidings to be announced from a region which is fighting fiercely against economic upheaval.

One in five people in Eisenhüttenstadt is unemployed. Young people are leaving in droves: the city has lost almost a third of its population since 1989, and numbers now just 37,009 inhabitants. 22 % of all flats were empty in April 2004, and the situation is generally expected to deteriorate still further over the next few years. That the former pioneering town which was supposed to symbolize the country's economic revival is now popularly known as "Schrottgorod" – Schrott means scrap and gorod is Russian for town – speaks volumes.

The city, however, has no intention of resigning itself to this far from flattering nickname. Since 2002, a federal and state-level scheme called "City Reconstruction East" has been underway, renovating or tearing down flats on a grand scale, redesigning housing developments and creating new parks and green areas. Such radical changes do not take place from one day to the next. Many visions – still – come up against simple yet practical boundaries: opportunities for collaboration with Poland, for instance, which arise as a result of the eastern expansion of the EU, are not exploited due to the continued lack of a border crossing in the town and a bridge over the river Oder.

The secret motto for the urgently needed reconstruction of Eisenhüttenstadt, incidentally, can be seen on the number plate of every motor vehicle in the Oder-Spree district: LOS – which roughly translated means LET'S GO!