A few years ago, I was driving to the city of Guben in the East German State of Brandenburg. I passed through a deserted mining town in the suburbs of Guben. There were huge craters that looked like the lunar surface, left behind due to brown coal mining. And, on the other side of the town were hundreds of empty houses with no people, bus stops with no buses and an abandoned church.
The village looked as if it had been struck by the outbreak of plague. And the rest of the landscape looked as if a battle had been fought there. In some houses, the curtains were still hanging and there were flower pots in the windows.
Toys were seen discarded on the lawn; the school building was intact, but had no children around. I felt like I was the last living person on earth — a mixed feeling of eeriness and melancholy.
Shrinking population
After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, millions of residents of what had been East Germany moved west.
More than a million homes and apartments were simply abandoned. But, today, one can see the decline of entire towns in the countryside. Yes, what in the past was a phenomenon confined to eastern Germany has slowly, but surely, crept into the western and southern part of the country.
Far-flung areas of the State of Hessen, Lower Saxony, Nordrhein Westfalia and Bavaria are falling further and further behind. Moreover, former mining and industrial heartlands, like the northern Ruhr Valley, are dotted with empty houses, churches and schools, exasperating communities already struggling with ageing populations.
The situation is compounded by the fact that Germany's population as a whole is shrinking. Just stroll through any German town, you will notice that four out of five people are above 70.
We have a situation where the older people are dying, there are not as many births, and the young people are leaving for the larger cities.
In the past, immigrants made up for declining birth rates among Germans. But the incursion has dwindled to a trickle. As a matter of fact, more people have been saying ‘goodbye' to the country than moving in.
Massive exodus
The massive exodus is causing cities across Germany to swell while taxing rural areas in terms of people, money and life. For instance, several parts of the State of Bavaria, which enjoys the greatest purchasing power among Germany's 16 federal States, are doing very poorly, with the greatest inequality between individual regions.
While home prices are skyrocketing in cities such as Munich, there is a mass exodus from the rural areas of north-eastern Bavaria.
Draining the Countryside
Though young people have always been attracted to big cities, Germany now is witnessing an indisputable cultural shift.
The young citizens of the information society are being attracted to the cities more strongly than ever — and, with them, many of the companies that fight harsh skirmishes to catch the fancy of the brightest minds. That leaves, at best, only vacation homes in the countryside.
In the 20th century, traditional manufacturing, mining, steel and shipbuilding industries made up the backbone of German economy.
Their decline marked the beginning of the end, primarily in the rural areas. At first, a company shuts down, then local stores slam their shutters for good, then the first houses are forsaken, and then many young people move away. Sooner than later, the only people left are seniors.
Indeed, politicians in western Germany are now having to deal with a tough question that their eastern compatriots have been facing for decades — whether to pump money into these hopeless regions or leave them to their own fate.
Wrecking Balls
So, while the sight of wrecking balls smashing down houses and blocks of prefab flats is not unusual in eastern Germany, the trend is now spreading to western towns.
The combination of a shrinking population and an increasing tendency for people to move into big cities in West Germany has left tens of thousands of properties empty.
Something like 100,000 flats in western Germany have been taken out of the market.
In several parts of Germany, huge villas, manors and houses lie empty and are never likely to be rented out or sold because they are old, or are in areas where demand is low and shrinking.
It is sad to see the beautiful villas and manors uninhabited.
They often have solid construction with lavish furnishings lying in acres of huge estates with lawn, swimming pool, lake and woods, obtainable at throwaway prices.
A new trend of these rapidly sprouting ghost towns is to attract foreigners, mostly retired, rich Europeans, to settle down in these towns, stressing the low real-estate prices, the proximity to the best infrastructure, clean air and the area's relative immunity to the effects of climate change.
Any takers from India?
(The author is a former Europe Director, CII and lives in Cologne, Germany. blfeedback@thehindu.co.in )