Merkel's eastern region suffers two decades on

German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Photo / AP

BERLIN - The bit of rural ex-communist hinterland in which German Chancellor Angela Merkel grew up has undergone an imaginative makeover since the 55-year-old pastor's daughter embarked on her political career.

Merkel, now one of the world's most powerful leaders, will today address the US Congress in a symbolic speech marking two decades since the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

Back in her former German Democratic Republic, the landscape has seen remarkable changes since 1989. Huge swaths of its industry have shut down or been gutted by what many still consider to be capitalist West Germany's wholesale annexation of the region.

With pockets of unemployment at 50 per cent in some areas, nearly two million of the former communist state's 17 million inhabitants have upped sticks and gone west in search of work.

The Chancellor's home town, Templin, which is also one of the region's main urban centres, has been rebranded "The Pearl of the Uckermark" and uses every Chancellor association it possesses to attract visitors.

In the 20 years since the collapse of the GDR, Templin's inhabitants have experienced massive and far-reaching changes. Templin is a microcosm; it shares the fate of much of former East Germany. It is like hundreds of other towns in the once collectively farmed rural regions of north-eastern Germany.

Under communism the Uckermark was home to one of the largest battery pig farms in East Germany, with 300,000 animals. The complex was shut down after reunification, throwing hundreds out of work.

The same applied to the region's Wisent jeans factory - which produced clothing that few young East Germans wanted to be seen dead in at the time, preferring Levi's smuggled in from the West. Wisent closed not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now, there is a large Levi's shop in the centre.

These days Templin is a carefully renovated walled market town of 13,000 inhabitants which is trying to carve out a future in tourism. Sabine Hetrich, who runs the tourist office from its perfectly restored, pink-painted, 18th-century town hall, says that the Merkel factor has put the town on the map. "We get lots of people dropping in here and asking about the Chancellor," she says. "Most of them are foreigners or West Germans."

It has a saw mill and a lumber industry, but unemployment still stands at around 20 per cent as a result of the mass lay-offs that followed reunification.

The region is proud of its crystal-clear lakes and extensive forests, and has built a network of special "bicycle autobahns" and wellness hotels. Other attractions are large thermal baths and an "Eldorado" cowboy theme park.