A mural in Eisenhuttenstadt titled 'Work for Peace,' an example of the enormous mosaics that were a common feature of public art in former East Germany. Photo / Kate Brady, The Washington Post
Back behind the Iron Curtain, when the town of Eisenhuttenstadt, 120km southeast of Berlin, was called Stalinstadt, it was meant to be a blueprint for utopian life in Communist East Germany - a model socialist city built around a steelworks.
Today, East Germany is no longer its own country and, despite the gaps slowly closing, residents of the region lag behind the West in virtually every category, including life expectancy, wealth, employment, and population.
So, as Germany celebrated the 35th anniversary of reunification last Friday, Eisenhuttenstadt - “Ironworks City” - has become a different kind of model.
It is one of several towns experimenting with a strategy to repopulate and attract skilled workers called Probewohnen, or trial living.
For two weeks in September, two prospective residents lived rent-free in furnished apartments and were treated to a programme of local events. When the trial plan was announced in July, interest far exceeded expectations; some 2000 applications arrived from around the world.
“We hoped that perhaps 20 or 30 people would apply,” Julia Balsan, the project’s manager, said.
Eisenhuttenstadt, where the population has plummeted by more than half - to 24,000 from 52,000 - since 1990, is a living reminder that German reunification has been a far less happy story in the east than in the west.
The rapid reunification, signed off less than a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, triggered deep demographic and social shifts.
Eastern Germany still lags in productivity, partly due to a lack of corporate headquarters and private investment.
Wages remain 15 to 20% below western levels, and private wealth has been limited by meagre inheritances, expropriations and lower real estate values.
Depopulation since reunification has been a persistent challenge, particularly in rural parts of eastern Germany.
Between 1990 and 2024, the population of the so-called “new federal states” - excluding Berlin - fell by 16%, while western states grew by 10%.
While better economic prospects and infrastructure helped some eastern cities like Dresden and Leipzig to boom in recent years, many rural areas, left without the same level of transport connections and digital infrastructure, have struggled to recover. Low birth rates and an ageing population have only exacerbated the effects.
“The root of these problems go back to the way reunification took place,” said economics professor at the University of Chicago Ufuk Akcigit, pointing to the privatisation or closures of state-owned enterprises.
What followed was a surge in unemployment in chemicals, coal, and machinery. Faced with limited opportunities, a net total of 1.2 million people migrated to western German states from the east between 1991 and 2010.
Eisenhuttenstadt is hoping its trial-living initiative will help reverse that trend.
“We had designed this as a skilled worker project, because we have numerous companies here from the industrial sector, from the industrial supply sector, but of course also in the healthcare sector, that are desperately looking for skilled workers,” Balsan said, citing the city’s history and Stalinist neoclassical architecture as key factors in the unexpected interest.
Actor Tom Hanks once raved about what he called the “Iron Hut City” after visiting twice in the early 2000s while filming Cloud Atlas and A Hologram for the King nearby.
Melanie Henniger, 49, an IT consultant and self-described empty nester, was one of the two participants selected for Eisenhuttenstadt’s trial living. Based in Bremen, in northwest Germany, Henniger’s remote job would make relocating to Eisenhuttenstadt easy.
“I was pleasantly surprised,” she said as the two-week trial came to an end.
The town was quiet and clean, she said. “This is a place where you can arrive and unwind.”
That can be positive as well as negative, she said, pointing to the relatively quiet weekends. But driving there is a breeze, she said: “The streets are wide, and you always find a parking space.”
The other trial resident, documentary filmmaker Jonas Brander, 39, said he was charmed by the “very nice and warm-hearted people” that he met in a short time.
The city’s challenge, he said, is to fill it with life.
“There’s sometimes a fear of the future, but also a lot of energy to somehow shape a different future,” Brander said. “That’s the feeling, or the energy that I’ve just experienced here, which I find lovely.”
More than 70 years after its founding, the city still leans on its steelworks for jobs, but demand now reaches far beyond heavy industry.
Hospitals need medical staff, while engineering, public administration, and environmental businesses offer growing opportunities. The proximity to Berlin combines quiet living with metropolitan access - at least when the regional train runs on time.
Other initiatives to polish the image of rural eastern Germany are also under way, including recently launched tours by the group Brandenburg Connect, which showcase overlooked places.
“The project is as much about improving the perception of lesser-known places as it is about piquing potential interest in moving here,” said Anna Momburg, one of the project’s leaders.
A digital platform to match skilled workers interested in relocating with rural regions is also in the works.
Visitors on such a tour in September spent the day getting to know the city turned heritage-site.
Built as a model socialist city, Eisenhuttenstadt is organised into residential complexes divided by spacious streets. The archways built into some buildings lead into expansive courtyards housing communal green spaces and play areas.
One participant on the tour, Ellen Rinner, 40, travelled 90 minutes from Berlin but grew up close to Frankfurt in Germany’s southwest.
Her main interest was the city’s architecture, and by the end of the day she said such tours could help overcome stereotypes about the eastern states.
“It’s important that things like this tour happen,” Rinner said. “I was born not long before reunification. But growing up it just wasn’t really a topic at all.”
With streets dotted with public sculptures, socialist murals, tiled storefronts and golden window frames, the socialist classicism and postmodern architecture transports visitors and locals back to a country that no longer exists.
Some corners have fallen into disrepair - perhaps none more than the city’s onetime cosmic gem: Hotel Lunik.
The guests have long checked out, along with the hotel’s space-race flair, but in the foyer, the moonlike texture of the wallpaper still serves as the backdrop to a huge ornament exhibiting the phases of the moon. Sputnik ceiling lights still hang overhead.
The long-term plan for the building is still undecided, but a once bustling restaurant and dancehall housed in the hotel building now hosts various events including art exhibitions and, in December, a New Year’s Eve party.
While Germany’s big-city dwellers struggle to cope with the soaring cost of living and housing shortages, smaller locations like Eisenhüttenstadt hope they can offer some respite, with more space for less money. Accommodation in the town is plentiful, with 1100 empty apartments.
“We have 200 apartments that we could rent straight away,” said Enrico Hartrampf, head of housing management at municipal housing and property company GeWi.
In one apartment block, renovations are under way to transform a three-bedroom apartment with a balcony.
One renovated three-bedroom apartment with a balcony rents for US$1000, utilities included - the same amount that might barely cover a one-room studio on a new lease in Berlin.
However, at a time when Germany as a whole is keen to attract skilled migrant workers, the rising popularity of nationalist and far-right sentiment, especially in the east, could also act as a deterrent.
Rural areas have become strongholds for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which has capitalised on feelings of abandonment post-reunification. The party, now deemed extremist by authorities, won 40% of votes in Eisenhuttenstadt in February’s federal election.
Sebastian Klusener, research director at the Federal Institute for Population Research, said the positive attention drawn to cities through trial-living projects could help improve the persisting image problem of the former East, long linked to stereotypes of the “down and out” eastern states.
“The last 20 years in particular have been very strongly shaped by a narrative that the East, that everything is dying and going down the drain, and that, of course, also has an impact on the people who live there when such narratives are constantly being cultivated,” Klusener said.
Nicola Fuchs-Schundeln, president of the Berlin Social Science Centre, described a vicious circle.
“In some areas you feel that young people don’t see a future. It’s a chicken-and-egg problem. Firms say, ‘We can’t find the workforce,’ and they don’t come there,” Fuchs-Schundeln said.
In 1990, under-25s made up nearly a third of eastern Germany’s population - twice the share of people aged 65 and over. By 2024, they were just 24% of the population, barely above the 23% 65-plus. In Eisenhuttenstadt, mobility aids are now a more common sight than strollers.
After a fortnight in the town, participants in Eisenhuttenstadt’s trial living said a final decision on a long-term move will require more time, more visits and more consideration.
“I’ve already decided to come here more often, to spend longer periods of time here without having this intensive support,” Henniger said, “to really get to know everyday life here”.
“At the moment, there’s nothing that really speaks against it,” she added.
The city has deemed the trial-living project a success and plans a second, expanded programme next year. Three leases for six newcomers attracted to the city, drawn solely by the attention to the project, have already been signed.
Klusener said he has high hopes for the future of Germany’s eastern states, but “it will take considerably longer than we originally thought”.
He pointed to the generational upheaval - for better or worse - that bypassed the former West.
“Anyone who has not lived in the East for a certain period of time, and there are many West Germans who have never even been to the Eastsimply cannot understand what it means when such a country is completely gone.”
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