German election haunted by eastern depression

Fifteen years on from reunification, Germans in the former Communist east are turning once again to Marxist parties in the face of 20 per cent unemployment and Government failure to remedy the region's woes.

The Left Party, headed by Oskar Lafontaine, is on course to become the region's strongest political force in next Sunday's general election, winning a projected third of the vote.

The swing to the radical left is one of the bitter consequences of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's unpopular, if necessary, economic reforms which have driven thousands of former Social Democrat voters to switch allegiance to the left. The upshot is a division on the left, one which is likely to cost Schroeder his job.

In the suburbs of eastern towns, it is not difficult to spot the causes of the new-found demand for radical solutions to the region's problems.

The town of Eisenhuttenstadt, which was once proudly referred to as "East Germany's first Socialist city" - is now in its death throes.

The population of this down-at-heel steel town near the Polish border has halved since 1990. More than 4000 flats in the city's "Living complex VII" district have been torn down over the past year, even though most of the buildings were built less than 20 years ago.

It is a far cry from the days when Eisenhuttenstadt was born in the 1950s for the workforce of its steel works.

The region is suffering a human haemorrhage comparable to the mass flight from the east in the run up to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961.

The failure to tackle the east's intractable economic problems have turned the region into poverty alley.

None of the country's main parties have been able to provide a possible remedy. Instead, the issue has been all but wiped off the political agenda.

Inevitably, the easy Marxist solutions offered by the Left Party appear as salvation to the east.

"We are going to change the political landscape in Germany," proclaims their party's election poster slogan. "We will not allow low wages, pension cuts and welfare state destruction."

Jonannes Reisz, the Left Party's organiser in Eisenhuttenstadt, was confident. "Our arguments strike a chord. The established parties have had 15 years to put the east back on its feet and they have failed."

Statistics bear him out. Despite a 1.25 trillion ($2.2 trillion) spending spree since 1990, eastern unemployment is at 20 per cent - a figure contributing to the five million jobless rate.

Detlef Raschke, 40, lost his job in the steel mill when its western owners dismissed 17,000 of its 20,000 workers under a post-unification "rationalisation plan". His family is living on 600 a month in welfare payments.

"I hate to admit it, but I was better off under Communism. I couldn't travel to the West but I had a steady job and several great holidays in Hungary."

- INDEPENDENT