Leipzig in the mix

The Plagwitz district of Leipzig was one of the biggest manufacturing hubs in turn-of-the-century Europe. The textile industry flourished here. Today, the only traces left are the skeletons of dead factories. Hollow-eyed brick buildings on grounds overrun with scruffy shrubbery. An industrial wasteland surrounded by what used to be the workers’ dwellings. This is the sad face of a city on the wane.

And yet there is life in this neighbourhood west of the city centre. Some of the erstwhile factory buildings have been recycled for new purposes: small-scale community activities, youth clubs, gyms. The old cotton mill is a case in point: in mid-June German Chancellor Angela Merkel officially opened an exhibition on the premises featuring artists who work there, a number of whom are internationally renowned.

“Some artists feel the west side has become much too elitist,” explains Tobias Habermann. “They leave to seek their salvation elsewhere in Leipzig.” They are the ones, however, who have given these neighbourhoods such a trendy image. “Around Lindenauer Markt, for example, 11 galleries have opened up recently. But most of the people you see hanging out at this square are welfare cases or 16-year-old mothers with prams.”

Habermann (32) is the Plagwitz district administrator: part of his job involves making sure the European and German redevelopment funds for the area are put to good use. One of the funding objectives is to stem the tide of desertion and dilapidation in these old blocks of flats. When, after the fall of the Wall, local industry ground to a halt, residents set off en masse seeking jobs in West Germany – which devastated the area, leaving countless half-demolished boarded-up buildings in their wake.

A “perforated city”, as Habermann calls it. These blocks of flats were built at the close of the 19th century, back when local industry was thriving. While many of the buildings are beautiful, many are in a sorry state of disrepair. “The owners put off investing in hopes of rising rents. We help them find temporary tenants. Young startups, students, artists.”

Plagwitz’s east end shows the fruits of a bona fide metamorphosis. The Schleussig area, for example, where young middle-class families have moved into old, rehabilitated buildings, factories converted into lofts and new, modern housing. The neighbourhood is so packed these days that even yuppies are now flathunting in Plagwitz.

Habermann is of two minds about this trend. He insists that Plagwitz should continue to be home to the people who currently live and work there, including the poor. “Roughly 45 per cent of the population around Lindenauer Markt are on the dole. Every city has its working class. These people have to live somewhere too! You can’t just banish them to the projects.”

Habermann’s chief concern is to improve the quality of local housing and the urban environment: “fix up the inner courtyards, grow the parks, rehabilitate the public schools and facilities, boost community activities.” But also to “help the 10 per cent immigrant contingent: Iranians, Cubans, Arabs, Vietnamese – seeing as the far right racked up a lot of votes in this neighbourhood.”

Local government action and initiatives seem to bearing fruit. In the eight square kilometres Habermann oversees, the resident population has grown since 2000 from 31,500 to 38,000. The increment mainly comprises low-income families in the housing projects on the west side, middle- and upper-class residents in the yuppie neighbourhoods to the east, and young designers from all over Germany.

Habermann hopes to bring them all together in early July for the big arts festival on the Karl-Heinestrasse, a hip street that leads to the city centre. The festival slogan is “The West is the Best”. Tobias Habermann knows what he is talking about: he lives with his wife and two children in a remote idyllic corner of the street, right by the edge of the water. This is quality habitat par excellence.

OPINION

Come back, Lenin, all is forgiven

"Slave state" and "capitalist dictatorship…" Could they really be talking about modern Germany?Spiegel reports that these are just some of the terms used by young people from former East Germany, who are anxious to prove that there is nothing "old fashioned," "outmoded," "stupid" or "nostalgic" about their affection for the German Democratic Republic. According to the weekly magazine, twenty years after the fall of the Berlin wall, the GDR is more idealised than ever. "Most of the citizens in the GDR had a nice life," insists Birger, a 30-year-old economist. "Back then we had the Stasi, today we have Schäuble [the Interior Minister] collecting our personal data." According to a recent study, 57% of East Germans are willing to speak in favor of the old communist single-party state, run by the SED. The Spiegel report further points out that nostalgia for the East "is not the sole preserve of one-time communist party members," but is also shared by the middle classes. "The GDR is idealised by young people, who have virtually no experience of what it was like," explains political analyst Klaus Schroeder who further adds "that many East Germans interpret criticism of the old system as a personal attacK." In the words of one youth quoted by Spiegel: "People have had enough of the idea that they should bow down to the West just because Germany was re-unified."