Determined to attract urgently needed professionals, one small city near Germany’s easter border tried tempting new residents with an offer of free accommodation. City officials report initial success.
Back in June, the small town of Eisenhüttenstadt in Brandenburg near the Polish border announced that it would offer a two-week stay in a furnished apartment to applicants who were potentially interested in moving there.
According to the application webpage, applicants already needed to reside in Germany or the EU, be eligible to work, and be “seriously considering moving to Eisenhüttenstadt permanently”.
The town’s authorities said the scheme was aimed at attracting skilled workers, former residents who had moved away, and self-employed workers looking for a change of scenery – a tall order for what was essentially a lottery for two-weeks of accomodation in a town that has last more than half of its population since 1990.
But it appears that the Probewohnen, or trial living, project has worked. A city-official in charge of the campaign announced this week that two winners have been chosen from a pool of more than 1,700 applicants from around the world.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, the city’s municipal economic development officer said they were “very surprised” by the reach of the project.
They added that applicants had cited a wide range of motives for wanting to move to Eisenhüttenstadt, including one foreign man who said simply that he wanted to marry a German woman.
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The two winners were both German professionals: A 49-year-old woman who had grown up in nearby Frankfurt an der Oder, and is interested in getting to know the region again, and a 39-year-old man from Berlin who is working on a documentary film about the city of Eisenhüttenstadt.
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The town is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. It was founded in 1950 in what was then East Germany and intended to be a model socialist city. It was originally called Stalinstadt.
The town’s population boomed in the 1950s and 60s, and a state-owned steel works factory maintained a sizable local workforce until around 1990. Following German reunification the steel works was privatised and its workforce significantly reduced.
An employee in protective clothing monitors the temperature of pig iron during tapping at a blast furnace of ArcelorMittal Eisenhüttenstadt GmbH. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Patrick Pleul
In the past thirty years, the town’s population has shrunk significantly and, like many small cities in former East German states, has suffered from labour shortages and an aging population.
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Relative economic hardship in Germany’s eastern regions, as well as a general sense of decline, are often cited as reasons for the surge in political support for populist parties, and specifically the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has been seen there.
Meanwhile, a sense of anti-immigrant sentiment in the region has been cited among the main reasons why new residents and foreign skilled workers hesitate to move in.
In Eisenhüttenstadt, the anti-immigration party won nearly 40 percent of the vote in the last national election in February.
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Town officials say the Probewohnen project allowed the city to highlight some of the positive aspects of living there, including; affordable renovated housing, green surroundings that are great for cycling and swimming, and plenty of work and childcare opportunities.
A city official said that one family from another EU country had seen the campaign and decided to move there of their own accord. At least one member of the family has already signed an employment contract with a local company and preparations for the move are under way, according to the official.
