A city in formerly communist east Germany has stunned local officials with the success of its innovative contest to curb depopulation by offering a fortnight of free housing.
Eisenhüttenstadt, a Soviet-style planned city on the Polish border, near Berlin, drew more than 1,700 applications from around the world to try living in the city, which was built around a steel plant in the aftermath of the second world war.
“We ourselves were very surprised by the reach our Probewohnen (trial living) project has had,” Julia Basan, the municipal economic development officer spearheading the campaign, told reporters on Thursday.
She said those who had thrown their hat into the ring since May had “the most wide-ranging motives” including one foreign man who simply said he “wanted to marry a German woman.” But the majority were “very realistic applications,” Basan said.
The two winners, both German professionals, will move into spacious furnished flats in the city centre in September and be treated to a red-carpet orientation programme.
Melanie Henniger, a 49-year-old IT consultant and self-described “empty nester” living in the north-western city of Bremen, said she had grown up in nearby Frankfurt an der Oder and was interested in returning to her eastern roots.
“This is a great chance to get to know the region again, because otherwise I wouldn’t have any opportunities at all as I don’t know anyone there any more,” she said. “In the best case scenario, I can put down new roots there again.”
The other successful applicant, 39-year-old Jonas Brander, is a Berlin-based film-maker working on a documentary about Eisenhüttenstadt.
“I’m very interested in the city and its people and I want to get very close to life in my work,” Brander said, adding that he was drawn to its “living history.”
Eisenhüttenstadt, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary, was the first city to be founded – in east or west Germany – after the Nazi period. It was built according to a socialist model designed to blend work and family life for the good of all.
However, the years since national reunification in 1990 have been hard on the town, which has fewer than half the 53,000 residents it counted before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The shrinking and ageing population has compounded a skilled labour shortage for local industry, in what economists say can easily turn into a death spiral.
A palpable sense of decline has spurred support for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party, which won nearly 40% of local votes in the February general election.
Despite these challenges, Basan said the programme had allowed Eisenhüttenstadt to put its best foot forward, touting its renovated and affordable neoclassical housing, verdant surroundings perfect for swimming and cycling, and plentiful childcare and work opportunities.
“We even had one family, from another European country, who heard about us via the Probewohnen programme and are moving here on their own steam. They’ve already signed a work contract with a local company,” she said. “They did it all themselves and we’re just thrilled.”