Thanks for sharing this Sleffie. I spent more than a few weeks working in
East Germany after I got a "European Out" from the Army. I would have
stayed in Germany had my 1st marriage held together. But I digress......I
worked as a civilian over there with a good friend of mine in a similar
situation, talking to the local people who were curious about the Americans.
They had never seen a black man in person (my buddy Mike was 6'3", 275 lbs),
much less an American black man. We could understand their German well
enough and were invited to eat dinner with many families too poor to feed us
(we insisted on paying), but were very hospitable. The food was better in
the smaller farm communities. Anyway, the people I came in contact with
were relieved to finally be free. Some towns had seen upwards of %20 of
their population "disappear" after they were heard saying the wrong thing to
the wrong person. The Stasi were ruthless.
The people I met were hopeful, and determined to succeed. They are lacking
in education (I know where they are coming from, LOL) and infrastructure and
industry, but I think that if the Socialist government over there repeals
some taxes and restores incentive to succeed, they will have a fighting
chance.
Joe
To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his
father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose
fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate
arbitrarily the first principle of association-the guarantee to every one of
a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.
-Thomas Jefferson
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Todd" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "RollTideFan-The University of Alabama Athletics Discussion List"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, August 23, 2004 4:20 AM
Subject: [RollTideFan] {ain't} Mr. Gorbachev - Build Back That Wall!
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/22/weekinreview/22land.html?th
> August 22, 2004
> In Germany's East, a Harvest of Silence
> By MARK LANDLER
>
> EIPZIG, Germany - In the flush of German reunification, Chancellor Helmut
Kohl declared that the former East German states would be transformed into
"blossoming landscapes, where it will be worth living and working."
>
> Germany backed up its promise with one of the greatest transfers of wealth
in human history: some $1.5 trillion has flowed from west to east since
1990, propping up living standards and financing epic public works projects,
among them a latticework of superhighways.
>
> But many roads lead nowhere. The landscape in eastern Germany remains
barren - emptier even than during Communist times, when the planned economy
supplied jobs and at least the illusion of commercial activity. Traveling
through eastern Germany with a camera 15 years later offers a chance to
document how tragically short a grand renovation project has fallen.
>
> Today, roughly one eastern German in five does not have a job, an
unemployment rate nearly twice that for Germany as a whole. The population
has dwindled by 1.6 million since 1990, to 15.1 million, as a steady stream
of people, particularly young women, have gone west in search of work. The
ebb tide has devastated places like Hoyerswerda, a small town that was
turned into a model industrial city by the Communists.
>
> With most of its jobs gone, the town has lost nearly half of its 70,000
inhabitants. Empty apartment buildings darken the horizon like cement
tombstones. Many fall to the wrecking ball, their jagged remains a hunting
ground for scavengers and boys with slingshots.
>
> Children seem almost an endangered species, since the couples who would
start families are precisely the ones who leave. Dresden, the proud but
tattered capital of the state of Saxony, is closing 43 schools this summer
because there are not enough kids to fill the classrooms.
>
> Germans, worried that the languishing east threatens to hobble the entire
country, have begun a national debate over what went wrong. The answer
supplied recently by a blue-ribbon commission is stark: too much money spent
on bricks and mortar, not enough on people.
>
> One can see the legacy of feckless investment in Saxony, once the
industrial heart of East Germany. Rust-belt cities like Chemnitz, formerly
Karl Marx Stadt, are full of shuttered factories. Many were bought after
1990 by western Germans, who found they could not churn out ball bearings or
grinding machinery or auto parts cheaply enough to make a go of it.
>
> In the wake of that futile gold rush, a more serious class of investors
has come, putting up microchip factories in Dresden and automobile factories
around Leipzig. Drawn as much by public subsidies as by patriotism, they
nevertheless offer a reed of hope for an industrial renaissance.
>
> Eastern Germany's problems, however, will not be solved by yet another BMW
plant. The real challenge is human: how to transform a society reared on
Communism and addicted to handouts from Berlin into a vital region ready to
compete with hungrier lands to the east.
>
> These days, some Ossis, as eastern Germans are not so affectionately
called by western Germans, rouse themselves only to protest the government's
plan to scale back unemployment checks. Former state farms lie fallow
because their new owners see no economic benefit to tilling the fields.
Where wheat and oats once grew, weeds and wildflowers now run riot.
>
> Helmut Kohl's promise of a blossoming landscape came true after all. But
surely not as he intended.
>
>
> Victor Homola contributed additional reporting
>
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