East German bang city breaks populist, back stereotypes

But some cities in eastern Germany have emerged as mercantile splendid spots where populist politicians are anticipating it tough to benefit ground.

Take a city of Jena in Thuringia state – race 100,000, stagnation rate 6.5 percent.

Long famous as a “lighthouse” of a region, a city boasts a multiplying high-tech zone and a clever visual record zone that even a comrade years didn’t extinguish.

Just a brief travel from a charming facades of a marketplace square, a white building stands out, temperament a blue letters “Jenoptik”.

The company’s arch executive Michael Mertin, who employs 3,500 people, told AFP that “the multiple of high-tech, well-trained employees and internationalisation have positively been a cause of success”.

The association traces a beginnings to a visual hulk Carl Zeiss, partial of that was nationalised during a comrade era.

Jenoptik grew out of a nationalised organisation after German reunification in 1990.

Today, it creates and sells ocular systems and laser apparatus opposite a world.

During a late-winter visit, a association was personification horde to dual South Koreans in city to learn how to use a high-precision laser record that cuts automobile parts.

Jenoptik is not alone in success in Jena, that now boasts some 5,000 enterprises.

A long-standing university has also regained popularity, and students make adult a entertain of a population.

‘Still prejudices’

“Jena has managed to overcome crises, since a record companies of a city aim a operation of markets with sundry products and are clever in exports,” pronounced Wilfried Roepke, who heads a city’s mercantile graduation group Jena Wirtschaft (Jena Economy).

That creates a city one of a few exceptions in eastern Germany, even if it’s not a usually success story today.

Mercedes-Benz is investing millions of euros in Ludwigsfeld in Brandenburg state that surrounds Berlin, while BMW has built an ultra-modern bureau in Leipzig.

Dresden has a Silicon Saxony of IT firms, and in Potsdam, a Babelsberg studios is again attracting ubiquitous film producers.

Despite a flourishing opportunities, “eastern Germany mostly doesn’t have such a certain image, there are still prejudices,” pronounced Roepke.

That extends to recruitment, where intensity employees mostly have to initial overcome an “initial reticence” stemming from a classify of eastern Germany as homely and backward.

A psychological separator still exists especially among Germans themselves, pronounced Mertin, who hails from a western city of Cologne.

From abroad, “Germany is noticed as a singular clever entity,” he said.

And there are signs a conditions is improving, with eastern regions carrying recently begun saying a net benefit in population, according to a Berlin investigate institute.

But a onslaught continues to tighten a mercantile opening with a west.

At 8.6 percent, a stagnation rate in a easterly stays 3 commission points aloft than in a west, while sum outlay per ancient in 2015 was scarcely 30 percent reduction than in western Germany.

According to a Jenoptik boss, a categorical plea is a deficiency of “big companies that have a intensity of apropos ubiquitous by themselves”.

None of Germany’s 30 biggest listed enterprises are formed in a east.

‘Scapegoats’

Given a mercantile divide, most of eastern Germany is fruitful belligerent for a populist celebration AfD (Alternative for Germany), that accuses foreigners of hidden German jobs and faults globalisation for relocating attention abroad.

“The mercantile conditions in Jena is comparatively good, though 30 kilometres (19 miles) to a east, a conditions is distant worse,” pronounced Denny Jankowski, a AfD’s claimant for Jena in a Sep ubiquitous elections.

He sees a opening between a easterly and west as far-reaching as ever, and complains that many easterners are trapped in low-paying jobs.

The AfD has also been vituperation opposite a record liquid of around a million asylum-seekers in 2015, personification on fears that Germany would not be means to confederate a newcomers who make adult about one percent of a country’s population.

Better behaving cities like Jena also humour from a double-edged sword of rising rents as a race grows.

There is a “kind of fear that people won’t be means to say their customary of living”, pronounced Mertin, though he insisted that “in each change, there is an opportunity.”

Opinion polls advise that one in 5 electorate in Jena’s state of Thuringia in foster of a AfD, while a inhabitant normal is half that during around 10 percent.

For Roepke, mercantile success alone is not adequate to drive a race divided from populist arguments.

But he is carefree that “when a mercantile conditions leads a vast partial of a race to be confident with his or her situation, afterwards there would be reduction of a need to demeanour for scapegoats or uncomplicated solutions.”

By Marie Julien