but instead of landing in ancient Rome or the age of dinosaurs you find yourself in the former East Germany surrounded by clunky computers and gadgets that look like they were designed by someone who thought "minimalism" meant "as few buttons as possible and maybe none of them actually work." Welcome to ZCOM Hoyerswerda where the digital future of the past is alive and well—and occasionally needs a reboot This museum is like a nerdy treasure trove of vintage tech with rooms filled with computers that once cost more than your car but now have less processing power than your smartwatch you can marvel at the GDR's finest attempts at computing very slowly." It's a place where floppy disks still reign supreme and the word "gigabyte" would have been considered science fiction But ZCOM isn't just about nostalgia; it's a celebration of the quirky charm of East German engineering You can explore exhibits that explain how these machines were used to keep the socialist state running from planning the economy to (probably) playing very slow games of Tetris It's a place that reminds you that while the West had Silicon Valley something that at least vaguely resembled a valley filled with silicon if you squinted hard enough this museum is dedicated to the history of computing and video games A small museum showcasing various communication equipment and laptops in the middle of the southeast Estonia countryside An interactive museum dedicated to preserving and sharing the history of the home computer Its diverse collection of computers and technology spans the ages This Croatian computer club features such gaming relics as the infamous Virtual Boy and an 8-bit Pacman machine From under the bed of one of the co-founders this server helped launch the notorious file-sharing website One of the world’s most powerful corporations was established on a random Albuquerque street corner A child plays near communist-era apartment blocks in Hoyerswerda After the collapse of the communist East German government that had redeveloped the area into an industrial hub factories shut down and coal production declined The population has sunk below 33,000 — about half its size before the fall of the Berlin Wall It was two years after the Berlin Wall had fallen when Karsten Hilse realized the people in his town had changed "It was the first time that a firebomb was thrown at me," Hilse remembers "Things like that didn't happen in the GDR." Hilse was a young police officer in his hometown of Hoyerswerda, in the former East Germany, also known as the German Democratic Republic or GDR. In 1991, a year after Germany reunified, rioters in the city targeted immigrants from countries such as Vietnam and Mozambique accusing them of taking jobs away from Germans dressed in riot gear to fend off the attackers work was plentiful and most people made the same salary "If you don't have enough — if you've lost your job and when everything that you'd hoped and wished would happen with reunification fails to materialize .. and you all of a sudden have all of this freedom that's really very frustrating," says Hilse "That makes it so that people are looking for someone to blame." As Germany celebrates the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall this week — and the end of a divided state that followed — cities in the former east such as Hoyerswerda are still struggling to thrive evidence that in a country united for nearly three decades divisions between east and west still exist Hoyerswerda's coal mines and massive power plant were among the industrial and economic engines of East Germany "This large power plant, this gas separation plant, the world's largest, needed an unending supply of workers," says Kirstin Zinke, director of the Saxon Museum of Industry at Knappenrode architects were brought in to plan a socialist utopia based around the coal industry including large state housing for workers and green spaces for their families "This new town was meant to be a true socialist new city that stripped away the trauma of two World Wars that affected everyone in the '50s It was supposed to imagine this truly socialist and just future society." Kirstin Zinke stands in front of the Knappenrode museum The rapid switch to capitalism changed the celebrated status of the worker who from one day to the next became the pariah of the nation," Zinke says of the figure of the laborer Many here long for the times before reunification because they were doing a lot better a laid-off coal mine employee who runs a food bank Then the city's population plummeted. What was a communist industrial hub of nearly 70,000 people in 1987 has now lost over half its population, as residents have looked for jobs elsewhere. Today it has fewer than 33,000 people, according to federal statistics. The anthropologist Felix Ringel has called it "Germany's fastest-shrinking city." Some of those who remain convey some nostalgia about the notorious former system lost her job in one of the many rounds of layoffs at the former state coal mining company "Many here long for the times before reunification because they were doing a lot better," she says "You didn't have to consider anything — you really just lived your life on a sedated path You're scared that you could become sick for a long period of time Krenz became the director of a local food bank people who make less than 1,000 euros ($1,105) a month stock up on produce so I have to come here," says 38-year-old Roland Scholz one of an estimated 600 people who depend on the food bank He says crystal meth is a big problem in the city I played outside all day with my friends until the church bell rang and I had to come home," he remembers you hope and pray your kids come back unharmed." That's why social worker Irena Kerber organizes soccer matches for at-risk teens "Some of these kids have some idea for what they'd like to do with their lives but most just sit in front of the computer or the TV," says Kerber this is the one thing that they have in terms of some sort of playground activity." But the future isn't totally bleak for these children, according to Mirko Kolodziej, a local journalist for the Hoyerswerdaer Tageblatt newspaper. The city's jobless rate is at a 30-year low of 6.6%, although that is about twice the national rate Local employment options include a hospital and a range of medium-size companies Kolodziej says many fellow citizens are now focused on urban gardening and activities for young people reporter for the Hoyerswerdaer Tageblatt newspaper stands among buildings constructed during the city's boom in the 1960s "We are kind of an example that you can be happy in a shrinking city We started a lot of cultural projects here and community work and a lot of different projects to try and bring people together," he says "Our concerns are essentially the same ones we had after unification in the '90s: that jobs will disappear," says Dubrau "The federal government has already decided that Germany is finished burning coal But they haven't offered any alternatives." Dubrau stands underneath the large cooling towers of Schwarze Pumpe the facility around which communist-era Hoyerswerda was built Germany's government decided earlier this year that the country will stop burning coal by 2038 It has plans for alternative energy sources such as gas solar and hydropower but critics in coal country say this won't be enough who represents Hoyerswerda in German parliament in Berlin Hilse questions the science behind cutting out coal use, a high carbon emitter that contributes to climate change. He is a member of the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, a political party criticized for hosting climate change deniers and anti-immigrant sentiments. The far-right party's popularity has surged in states such as Saxony Hilse shrugs off the criticism to focus on what he says is a crucial energy policy mistake The plan to shut Germany's nuclear and coal power plants will leave the country without enough electricity and will shed many jobs He estimates it will lead to 25,000 lost jobs in Germany's coal industry will hurt a city that was supposed to be built for the well-being of its workers Become an NPR sponsor Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker On one side of the centre of Hoyerswerda is a stereotypically east German high-rise estate whose car park is no more than a quarter full the atmosphere is weirdly akin to that perfect stillness you get in the countryside the silence is punctured by the sound of a domestic argument in a nearby apartment They are actually rowing up on the 10th or 11th floor but in a town this quiet even the faintest noise carries Hoyerswerda is about 90 miles south of Berlin and 40 miles from the Polish border Around one in five of the local population are Sorbs who speak a language related to Polish and Czech which is used on bilingual road signs This was once the communist equivalent of a boomtown with the highest birth rate in the German Democratic Republic and more than 70,000 inhabitants But in the great bonfire of east German industry that followed reunification the local economy – centred on the mining and processing of lignite the soft brown fuel halfway between coal and peat – was devastated this is a case study in de-industrialisation familiar to anyone from the more blighted parts of Britain – but here there are very German peculiarities that take things into the realm of the surreal Hoyerswerda's peak population has dropped by around 40% emptying out vast residential leviathans that are still being demolished the results of the town's decline were in keeping with that time-honoured symbiosis between shrinking prospects and the politics of hate: Hoyerswerda remains a byword for a deeply ugly episode in 1991 when local neo-nazis besieged a hostel for refugees one of the most sobering aspects of Germany's recent history was drastically altering life here as the uncertainty that followed reunification spread at speed a huge drop in births created what's known as "the kink" whereby the number of children fell to an extent only usually seen during wartime you instantly see the result: a striking lack of teens and twentysomethings compounded by the fact that as they have come of age thousands of the comparatively few newborns have either got out Those that remain are faced with one cast-iron legacy of the east-west split Germany has been praised for comparatively low youth unemployment in keeping with the unemployment figure for the workforce as a whole – 10.8% twice the rate in the west – it's reckoned to be at least double that number Ask anyone under 30 to describe life in Hoyerswerda and out it all comes: it's a "pensioner town" where young people are too often sidelined but at the weekend they just walk around town mucking about and getting pissed," says Falko Ebeling "There's just less and less stuff being provided for kids." Ebeling is an embodiment of Hoyerswerda's predicament: he's been through two traineeships in the retail trade with vague plans to go to either Dresden or Leipzig east German cities held up as examples of post-reunification success His fate also shines light on the alleged failings of the German education system The GDR had its own kind of comprehensive schools but the logic of the selective West German model was extended to the east In most west German lander there remain three tiers: the gymnasien aimed at those deemed to have academic talent; supposedly vocational hauptschulen; and realschulen built around gymnasien plus schools that combined the lower two levels But the west's model was carried over into the central fact of all German secondary education: that too many people's life chances are crudely decided at one moment – somewhere between the ages of nine and 10 in the west and a couple of years later in most of the east the paths of children follow those of their parents closely enough for reformers to malign it as a de facto caste system the sanctity of gymnasien is non-negotiable and the idea of changing the system unthinkable (when a Christian-Democrat/Green coalition in Hamburg recently floated the modest idea of delaying selection until the age of 12 it was faced with an unbeatable rebellion known as the "Gucci protest" Most pertinently in the case of Hoyerswerda there is the fact that thousands of pupils who don't make it to a gymnasium are readied for the so-called "dual system": an enduring example of German corporatism whereby school leads to a wage-paying apprenticeship This staple of German industry is praised for its role in the lid the country has kept on youth unemployment it presents a big problem: what if a whole swath of the school system is built around a vision of work that simply doesn't exist worthwhile apprenticeships are pathetically thin on the ground Schemes in what passes for the local service sector offer only flimsy prospects and are often hard to find Non-gymnasium students often complain of a dead-end education the most likely outcome of which is a life spent in low-wage employment or on benefits the rest of your life may well have been decided: you'll be in danger of getting stuck a prominent young activist from the Social Democrats this is why the school system "triples the disadvantages of young people in the east" On a half-empty industrial estate on the edge of Hoyerswerda is the local Euro-schule. It's one of a chain of German institutions that has a two-sided mission: to familiarise high-achieving young Germans with the rest of Europe and to assist the prospects of people much further down the educational hierarchy it's all about the latter: encouraging young people with no qualifications to recover lost time and get some vocational training – and the twentysomethings here are sparky and articulate All of them smoke: the de rigeur brand is a faux-American variety called Route 66 Set against the dead streets just down the road "There are no opportunities here," says Sophia Mark after a flurry of conversation about the local presence of "Nazis" and "delinquents" there are opportunities," offers Stefanie Nauge you need to focus and get into a gymnasium." "If I'd known how important that actually was – well I would have worked harder," says 25-year-old Daniel Heidemeier who has found a traineeship in the building trade until you remember that he is probably casting his mind back to life as an 11-year-old Out of his secondary school class of around 25 only three people are still in Hoyerswerda "I'd love to stay if there were any opportunities But maybe I've now got the opportunity to leave On the other side of town is an after-school youth club called Ossi – a reference to both a Soviet author named Nikolai Ostrowski and the national colloquialism for easterners up to 40 teenagers come and go; it's some token of how rigidly the German school system carves up the population that according to the people in charge Breakdance classes are a weekly fixture and graffitied murals that capture a seemingly unanimous dedication to the culture of urban black America the answer sounds like it came from some spoof youth TV documentary "It reflects reality," says Riccardo Danz "It gives us something to relate to." are on benefits – they want him out of Hoyerswerda "My mum is already getting me worked up about leaving this place She says: 'There's nothing here for you.' Even if there is work And look at the place: all those empty blocks of flats The youth club is run by a young social worker called Sandra Neuber one of a small but driven band of people who have refused to join the exodus and are trying their utmost to stop hopes being broken beyond repair Even the tenor of the local nightlife seems almost comically grim: though it's sponsored by the local McDonalds a forthcoming club night is titled – in English – "Fuck the Beat and Die Dancing" and advertised with a flyer featuring a monochrome figure wearing a gas mask On the edge of the Hoyerswerda's main park six or seven adolescents – all hooded tops beer bottles and cigarette smoke – seem to be readying themselves for a night of getting pissed and mucking about along roads hardly troubled by end-of-day traffic Which language would you like to use this site in To mark the International Day of Tolerance on 16 November Amnesty researcher Marco Perolini speaks to families in Germany who have been the victims of racist threats and attacks “I am not going out without my husband anymore People always give me bad looks just because I am wearing the headscarf and I am a foreigner fled to Germany from Iraq with her three children They were staying in local accommodation set up for asylum seekers when a man tried to break into the building “I don’t go to the park with my kids on my own and I have the impression people are very hostile in town plans to establish accommodation for asylum seekers in Hoyerswerda triggered open hostility from locals Far-right groups have remained active in the town following notorious racist riots in 1991 and there was a coordinated online campaign to ensure the building never opened “There is a lot of misinformation”“We responded immediately,” says Maruska the engaging leader of a local community group which is working hard to prevent a repeat of the 1991 riots “We involved local authorities and organized public events to discuss the issue There was a lot of misinformation about asylum seekers Many people think they are privileged and I kept on stressing the contrary.” far-right groups have staged hundreds of protests against accommodation for asylum seekers But the number of refugees here is still comparatively low – there are 2.32 refugees per 1,000 people in Germany “I don’t have rights here”The situation in Germany is echoed across Europe victims of hate crimes are struggling to get justice and authorities do not recognize the racist motive behind crimes police in Marseille injured a Roma man from Romania after he was forcibly evicted from his home who was violently attacked in December 2013 “I came to Bulgaria to escape death in Syria but I don’t have rights here I was beaten up and I have almost lost one eye – but the authorities are not dealing with my case.” Europe needs more community initiatives like Maruska’s group in Hoyerswerda But no local initiative can be successful if isn’t accompanied by a larger debate on racism and discrimination And governments have to ensure that hate crimes are recognized as such Together we can fight for human rights everywhere Your donation can transform the lives of millions If you are talented and passionate about human rights then Amnesty International wants to hear from you MenuThe world in briefCatch up on global daily news var(--mb-colour-greyscale-london-5));} | The demographic challenge.css-1ugm8pm{color:var(--header-headline-color 1fr));}}@media (min-width: 52.125rem){.css-1uuz26i{grid-template:auto/repeat(9 1fr));}}@media (min-width: 89rem){.css-1uuz26i{grid-template:auto/repeat(12 offer respite from the strains of urban life: cheap housing and plenty of kindergarten places the shortage of which is a huge source of stress for metropolitan parents Neither is near a big city; both offer visitors a friendly This article appeared in the Special report section of the print edition under the headline “Desperately seeking people” Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents as the fog slowly lifts and crows circle above the communist-era highrises matters of life and death have begun to mark the day in the eastern German town of Hoyerswerda -- as they do so often stands next to a patient he thinks is suffering from stomach cancer in a comforting sing-song voice that puts elderly women at ease he says: "You sleep nicely and I'll do the work for you." In the obstetrics and gynecology department a Lebanese doctor is running an ultrasound transducer across the belly of a pregnant woman who is experiencing premature contractions he is searching the fetus for a pair of testicles listens to a child's bare belly using Günter Günter tickles and the doctor speaks in a Mickey Mouse voice Helping to deliver life and to delay death is the daily business at this hospital in Hoyerswerda a city 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of Berlin concrete box with six floors; it is surrounded by residential buildings The revolving door deposits people inside the hospital -- healthy ones carry flowers and chocolates the ill or injured can be seen in dressing gowns there was less of everything here -- less coal mining and fewer people One 2011 study found that Hoyerswerda had become home to the highest share of dementia patients of any city in Germany with one-third of the local population aged 65 or older Built as a model socialist concept city by the Communist Party Hoyerswerda was home to 70,000 residents during the East German days That meant the construction of lots of drab many of which are now tagged for demolition The city now has a population of less than 35,000 and dandelions have begun taking over unused lots The craters in the lunar landscape surrounding the city part of plans to create one of Europe's largest lake districts with 12 packs known to be living in in the surrounding Lausitz region city planners and sociologists travel here to study the effects of population exodus and demographic transformation and to see if something can be learned from this shrinking city It is the primary healthcare provider for the region around 20,000 inpatients and 40,000 outpatients per year administrators have launched an experiment -- that of hiring foreign doctors to fill vacant positions one out of three doctors in the facility is not German Around 50 doctors from 16 different nations work here not counting those who have already become naturalized citizens The region will continue to waste away and it is too late to turn things around But medical workers and doctors from Eastern Europe the Muslim world and Africa are at least helping this transformation take place with dignity -- and helping in the search for recipes to address the shortage of doctors and nurses experienced elsewhere in Germany as well the experiment may even help curb the xenophobia that has plagued the region for decades has a dark past -- one well known to most in Germany just two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall xenophobic riots in the city saw right-wing mobs attack hostels for foreign contract workers and asylum seekers Dozens were injured and the city became a no-go area for foreigners A typical day of patient visits with pediatrician Galil shows that xenophobia is still present who adds that his European colleagues don't have a problem "It's because of the color of my skin." Almost as if to prove it a child wearing green rubber boots with a runny nose and a terrible cough a heavy-set woman with lavender streaks running through her blonde hair Galil bears a slight resemblance to the younger Michael Jackson He wears a white lab coat -- and wears his thick curls in an Afro "the man's hairdryer blew up in his face." who appears to be suffering from a stomach ache after eating too many potato chips "You must have had to learn a lot from us -- the language how to behave and now to become a nurse -- respect!" Senior Physician Tarik Galil is familiar with all such reactions and sometimes he says he feels like a development aid worker He once considered going to Africa with Doctors without Borders but he instead landed at this hospital in the state of Saxony He had just arrived in Germany as a 12-year-old when he first heard of Hoyerswerda The city was featured on the news on TV and his mother made him promise that he would never go there He had fled the civil war in Sudan with his parents and his four siblings and they were living at the time as asylum seekers in Germany near the Dutch border the family only spoke German and his dad even kept a dictionary at the dinner table in case they needed to look up words one is a law professor and several others are doctors Tarik became a senior physician in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia and all of the siblings have since become German citizens The pediatrician wound up in Hoyerswerda despite his mother's warnings Now the father of two small children and with a mortgage to pay Galil came to check out the town by covering for other doctors on vacation he says he asked for directions to the hospital at the train station "The 30- to 60-year-olds are okay," he says "Those who are younger are skinheads and the older ones are old Nazis but that's how I see it." He says racism in Germany was also one of the reasons he decided to specialize in pediatrics "You can still help kids to change -- you're working towards life The events that make Galil's mother so fearful back then -- and which continue to traumatize Hoyerswerda to this day -- took place on five autumn days 23 years ago a pair of young German men began beating up Vietnamese workers The immigrants barricaded themselves inside a hostel for East German-era contract workers from Vietnam and Mozambique at a local brown coal processing plant Assailants threw rocks and Molotov cocktails injuring 32 people at the contract worker hostel and a hostel for asylum seekers with hundreds of locals shouting hateful slogans in front of the hostels authorities decided to transport the foreigners out of the city in buses The mob on the street screamed epithets at the immigrants and cheered their departure They declared Hoyerswerda to be "free of foreigners." about what happened back then in Hoyerswerda a politician said the riots were "about the worst" thing to happen in Germany since Kristallnacht as the anti-Semitic pogroms of November 1938 are called Yet the hostels of Hoyerswerda were not burned and nobody was killed was the first in a series of xenophobic attacks in early 1990s-Germany It was as though the riots there had opened a valve making the worst imaginable things possible local residents set fire to a hostel for foreign workers in Rostock two homes belonging to a Turkish family were set on fire in the city of Mölln in Schleswig-Holstein in northwestern Germany killing the grandmother and two granddaughters three days after Germany's asylum laws were tightened four young men committed an arson attack on the home of Turkish immigrant workers in Solingen in North Rhine-Westhphalia The victims either burned to death or died trying to jump out of the window It appeared that dark Germany had regained the upper hand and there was considerable outrage worldwide then-SPIEGEL reporter Matthias Matussek wrote extensively about Hoyerswerda He said the city had become a synonym for neo-Nazi rot where "the ugly German has had his coming-out." Grahlemann took over management of the hospital in 2006 and ran it for eight years He started working there at a time when the clinic could barely afford to pay its workers' salaries Entire wards at the hospital were abandoned doctors had moved out and new people didn't want to come to replace them His predecessors received special allowances for their willingness to work in the east but they ultimately were unable to stop the facility's deterioration It was Grahlemann's idea to recruit foreign doctors to the area Grahlemann decided to change the hospital's name had to disappear so he instead focused on something more positive -- the new lake district being created in the area Grahlemann decided to rename it the Lausitzer Lake District Clinic: The Academic Teaching Hospital of the Dresden Technical University Hoyerswerda now only appears in the fine print The hospital executive also designed a chic and friendly new logo that includes elements representing the water Attracting doctors proved to be a more difficult task "What does a doctor want to do?" Grahlemann asked himself enjoy the nature and then go home for the weekend That's something we can offer." Grahlemann worked together with a dozen headhunters and also went on promotional tours spending years sitting at small stands at annual medical conferences in Prague Most foreigners were unaware of Hoyerswerda's past and expressed interest in working there he received 15 applications in response to a job ad placed in Germany Once it became clear to applicants that the position was in Hoyerswerda "It's clear that German doctors have a problem with Hoyerswerda," Grahlemann says he argues that German medical students are less committed saying they are more interested in working part time or focusing on their free time "They prefer to go into the pharmaceutical industry or research," he says Grahlemann's recruitment tour was not made necessary just because his hospital was located in Hoyerswerda The healthcare industry in Germany has suffered from a migratory phenomenon for many years now making hospitals and practices in rural areas increasingly dependent on foreign workers around 35,000 foreign doctors are working in Germany and several thousand positions remain vacant a town also located in the state of Saxony employs almost exclusively nurses from Spain a country where one out of two people under the age of 25 is jobless But even as Germany draws in foreign healthcare workers German doctors are going abroad to Scandinavia where they can command significantly higher salaries The Lake District Clinic has since improved the services it offers to its foreign workforce There's a "Welcome Day," German language instruction is offered on site the hospital pays for hotel rooms as new employees search for apartments and it helps with administrative formalities Summer BBQs are also hosted in which each doctor brings specialties from his or her home region The hospital says it has only had to send two foreign workers home so far One was a Chinese man whose accent was too strong for German patients to understand an Italian man who wanted to become a surgeon Grahlemann is thoughtful when asked if it is right for Germany to address its labor market problems by recruiting workers from low-income countries or war-torn regions they have the possibility to become anything Robert Donoval is the youngest chief physician at the hospital and the first to have come from abroad He originally planned to stay for only two years -- and he initially suffered from homesickness for Prague and missed his apartment on the city's famous Wenceslas Square after becoming a chief physician a few weeks ago Donoval is a general practitioner responsible for 40 beds and he speaks very quickly and is constantly moving Donoval says such a rapid rise through the ranks would not have been possible in Prague where there's "too much nepotism and all the good posts are already taken." But he is under a lot of pressure here and that he has to be "twice as motivated" as his German colleagues -- otherwise he wouldn't be able to handle the workload "We chose the right boss," whispers a nurse But it's a tough job: Donoval's office is stacked with files and he doesn't get much time to spend at home with his wife a Slovakian who followed him to Hoyerswerda and works as a nutritionist When asked if he feels disadvantaged as a foreigner or if he has ever had problems with right-wing radicals He says he's a huge fan of Germany and praises its "order," "industriousness" and Richard Wagner he has a copy of "Germany Does Away with Itself" on his shelf the bestselling book by firebrand populist Thilo Sarrazin that made headlines a few years back with its highly controversial theories about immigrants Donoval does his best to be the better German He's a typical example of immigrants who have fought hard for their success and show little pity for slackers saying he gets annoyed when Angela Merkel "is cursed as a Nazi by the Greeks just because she knows how to save his phone rings and he rushes back to the ward in the old city center on the other side of the river sits at a plastic table in a hostel with a cup of coffee and cookies He's surrounded by a Syrian family that has come to seek his advice Ali is examining the anti-depressants and blood pressure medication prescribed to them by their doctors Ali is an anesthesiologist in the intensive care unit a serious man with melancholy eyes who is generally the most important man in the operating room it's his job to ensure that people don't feel very much but here he has compassion and exhibits his anger Ali is first and foremost a Syrian trying to help out fellow Syrians in need and these weekly visits aren't easy on him Ali is sitting in Hoyerswerda's new asylum seekers' hostel the first to open here since the 1991 riots The number of asylum seekers in Germany has grown so dramatically in the past three years that the state of Saxony was forced to find new places to shelter them Some 130 asylum seekers got assigned to the city and they moved into the quarters -- a remodeled former school for the handicapped that is located far away from the location of the 1991 riots The people living here are African who crossed the Mediterranean by boat Iranians and an Iraqi woman with triplets who had been persecuted by her husband This too -- the opening of an asylum hostel in Hoyerswerda -- is an experiment Will the "ugly German" hold back this time In "Hoyerswerda of all places," the newspapers wrote It is a "city on probation." Germany and the world are paying close attention The Ali family came to Hoyerswerda a year and a half ago Everything that was important to them was left behind in their homeland: their relatives a three-story villa and his wife's pharmacy They came to Germany with four suitcases and two daughters Today they live in a middle-class apartment building with no neighbors under the age of 70 with signs in the hallway prohibiting various things The price for their new lives in Germany is high: bureaucracy visits to the authorities and vast amounts of paperwork Ali was successful largely because of the assistance provided by the hospital but his wife still has to go through it all She'll have to take classes to learn German obtain a license to practice and undergo a traineeship program despite the fact that she already ran her own pharmacy they go to town festivals and have German friends asked her teacher when the foreign children living in the asylum seekers hostel would finally be allowed to attend their school Sitting at a table in the asylum seekers' hostel There are the Germans who give them dirty stares when they greet them They say one of the men from the hostel got attacked in the town square and that their son is now wetting his bed at night What do you expect from these people?Certainly not unconditional love." He then rushes back to the patients at the hospital you have refugees who appear to be powerless and stranded in the furthest eastern corner of Germany you have doctors who are helping to save a town They are adjusting to their surroundings and showing what may soon be the fate of other outlying regions in Europe immigrants are coming in to take over unfilled jobs and are even transforming dying places like Hoyerswerda into multicultural cities in the heart of the EU It more or less works because Hoyerswerda isn't just home to right-wing rowdies a 44-year-old who was born here and whose family has deep roots in the city When she's not taking care of her five kids and her grandson she can be found sitting in the office of a local citizens' initiative fighting xenophobia called Hoyerswerda Helps with Its Heart the organization can rapidly mobilize some 50 people and deploy them against neo-Nazis in front of the hostel should it become necessary Maroske says she stood by in 1991 as her former husband screamed at foreigners to leave town She says wants to make up for that wrong through "better prevention Maroske leads a reporter through the apartment complex she grew up in where she had her appendix removed as a child she talks effusively about her life back then She points to abandoned playgrounds where hundreds of children used to play and to the neighborhood bar -- boarded up today -- where her father used to drink beer She points out the cleaners where workers at the local coal mine would leave their clothes washed Envy of the newcomers quickly turned into hatred "They're taking away our work and our women and they are getting more from the state than we are." Maroske says people still use the same arguments today not even after the recent anti-Muslim Pegida protests in Dresden a monument is being dedicated in the town to commemorate the riots the local commissioner for foreigners' affairs television teams and the new hospital director have all gathered to inaugurate it No doctors are present; they have too much to do But just as the mayor begins to speak about a "culture of welcoming" and a "cosmopolitan town," five neo-Nazis position themselves directly in the line of the cameras One has "Hoyerswerda" tattooed on his right forearm They want to be seen and begin chanting so as to disrupt the proceedings one can look through the memorial at the hospital in the distance Dusk is descending and the clinic's lights shine bright -- it's hard to tell if it is real police are seen during the xenophobic riots that took place in the city in September 1991 Hoyerswerda has never recovered from the events of the time and its population continues to shrink today Foreigners from Africa can be seen here on Sept Locals cursed and clapped as they were taken away saying they wanted Hoyerswerda to be "free of foreigners" Vietnamese workers hold up a banner reading Some called the riots the worst episode in Germany history since Hitler's Kristallnacht pogroms against the Jews in 1938 An African worker is seen here peering out a window Hoyerswerda is now hoping to burnish its badly tarnished image the 20th year since the fall of the Berlin Wall Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is preparing for a host of celebrations and commemorations leading to the November anniversary The official story of an eastern revival was reinforced by President Obama’s recent visit to Dresden in all its reconstructed glory in places like this former industrial mining town the story of decline and departure has changed little in the former East Germany Not far beyond the few thriving urban centers traffic is often spare on the freshly paved highways and at night in parts of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania in the northern part of the country there is hardly a light to be seen to either side of the autobahns the performer Rainald Grebe described a feeling of solitude by singing I feel Brandenburg,” referring to the former East German state that surrounds Berlin Newspapers track the return of wolf packs to Saxony along the Polish border on the one hand and the continued migration of the young and the educated to the greater opportunities in the west on the other When German government officials last week presented their annual report on the state of unification and the attempts of the former East Germany to catch up to the west the picture they painted was overwhelmingly positive The government accurately reported that it had spent more than $60 billion supporting businesses and building infrastructure from 2006 to 2008 alone And economic activity per person has risen to 71 percent of the former western sector’s from 67 percent over the course of this decade the east is on the best track to converge with the west,” said Wolfgang Tiefensee the minister responsible for the development of the former East German states It is closing partly because the export leaders taking the hardest hits in the economic downturn are in the west Unemployment in the former East Germany remains double what it is in the west and in some regions the number of women between the ages of 20 and 30 has dropped by more than 30 percent roughly 1.7 million people have left the former East Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall a continuing process even in the few years before the economic crisis began to bite And the population decline is about to get much worse as a result of a demographic time bomb known by the innocuous-sounding name “the kink,” which followed the end of Communism The birth rate collapsed in the former East Germany in those early uncertain years so completely that the drop is comparable only to times of war director of the Berlin Institute for Population and Development “For a number of years East Germans just stopped having children,” Dr The newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported recently that although 14,000 young people would earn their high school diplomas this year in Saxony about 2,000 schools have closed across the former East Germany because of a scarcity of children once a model city of Communist East Germany with the highest birth rate in the country Emptiness is the reigning feeling when walking through the city which has lost more than 40 percent of its residents since the fall of the wall with the population dropping below 40,000 people from more than 70,000 plans to work in New Zealand next year and then expects to go to college she does not describe herself as leaving happily I grew up here and I like the city,” she said the industrial complex at Schwarze Pumpe used to provide 13,000 jobs to Hoyerswerda residents in Communist times The city government is tearing down apartment buildings to try to keep up with the plunge in population 7,500 have been torn down and 2,000 more are scheduled for demolition On a recent visit home from where she now lives Judika Zirzow stood on a flat expanse of earth The barren tract was once an apartment building one of the pillars of the former East German Wohnkomplex “Every time I visit my parents and I drive through Hoyerswerda there’s every time a new house that’s torn down,” said Ms She said she was well aware that she enjoyed opportunities that she never would have had under Communism having just returned from a trip to Thailand with her Australian-born boyfriend But that does not change the feeling she gets when she goes back “It’s sad to think that if I have children but has already seen a lifetime’s worth of change “I saw as they built the apartment where the children grew up,” she said “I was happy when we moved into the newest buildings in the city she and her husband live in a small house in a village outside of town “The people of the east have turned into nomads,” the elder Ms speaks to supporters after exit poll results in state elections on Sept For as long as Germany has been a unified country the center-left Social Democratic Party has helped govern Brandenburg a state in the country's east that surrounds Berlin an SPD member of Brandenburg's state parliament is concerned about how long that will last voters in her town of Zeuthen helped the far-right Alternative for Germany double its share of the vote in Brandenburg from 12.2% to 23.5% the AfD managed to secure 27.5% of the vote a 17.8% increase over the last election five years ago The center-left coalition governments in both Brandenburg and Saxony managed to hold onto power by just single percentage points The two state elections confirmed what political analysts have been warning for years: that the AfD is rapidly gaining popularity among German voters it didn't have enough votes to sit in Germany's Bundestag or parliament the AfD is now the third-largest party in Germany winning 94 of the Bundestag's 704 seats in the last federal elections The rapidly growing party has center-left politicians like Fischer concerned The SPD's Tina Fischer believes her party should have reacted more quickly to voters' concerns when Germany took in large numbers of migrants in 2015 believes her party should have reacted more quickly to concerns about a surge of around a million migrants that Germany began taking in four years ago Around 2% of the migrants who have moved to Germany fleeing wars and instability in Iraq and Syria — roughly 28,000 — chose to settle in the bucolic towns of Brandenburg Fischer and her party colleagues have learned the hard way that their constituents are still uneasy about these asylum seekers and the AfD has successfully campaigned on these fears 'You don't have any reason to be frightened,'" says Fischer says her city government should have hired more police officers to patrol public squares trains and buses to help residents feel safer As she explains what she could have done better She says an emboldened AfD has become popular not only through its anti-immigration message but by how it delivers that message: through Facebook in a style Fischer calls "Diktatur der lauten menschen," dictatorship of the loud "And they are loud and they are noisy and they are in the newspapers and they are on Facebook," she says AfD supporters and politicians cheer results of the state elections in Brandenburg on Sept She says she's worried that AfD's surge in popularity in Brandenburg will turn away multinational companies — the region is home to big employers like Rolls-Royce and engine maker MTU some of whose employees she imagines might be scared of settling down in what she calls "Nazi-land." AfD voter Peter Scheppert objects to the way the party is characterized I can say that we are not just one class of the population who are very stupid and who have no education," he says Our opinions are shared by all classes of society." The 65-year-old retiree says his family – all of whom His 45-year-old daughter works for Bayer and speaks Mandarin His son-in-law has lived in Japan and Spain and wants to complete his Ph.D Scheppert says he and his family voted for the Social Democrats for decades — but switched to the AfD in this election because they're frustrated with what he calls "an unchecked flow of asylum seekers" into Germany He's also frustrated with the election results "The AfD should have had more votes," huffs Scheppert Hendrik Böheme is on a coffee break from his construction job He believes that the AfD's popularity is surging because the government "mismanaged" an influx of refugees "There are refugees all over the world who have to be taken care of," says Böheme But the single men who can rebuild their home countries should go back." Other AfD supporters in Zeuthen refused to be interviewed by NPR fake news establishment that would portray AfD supporters as Nazis says such suspicions are rooted in the way German media and rival politicians portray AfD members — as extremists The press has a problem with us and always tries to blame us," says Kuffert "It's wrong to assume we are right-wing radicals I see people who want to build a reasonable Germany This certainly has nothing to do with the dark Nazi period." A few dozen Jews from the former Soviet Union joined the AfD last year which caused outrage among Germany's Jewish community Kuffert says Germany's political and social elites will continue to get his party wrong until they come to the realization that the AfD represents what he calls "the country's middle." Polling data released this week shows that while the AfD may not represent "the middle" nationwide, the party is rapidly gaining in national popularity. A monthly survey by the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach shows the AfD achieving its highest popularity score all year among voters throughout Germany Political analysts will be closely watching the upcoming state elections in the eastern state of Thuringia on Oct where the AfD is polling neck-and-neck with centrist and leftist parties NPR Berlin bureau assistant Anna Noryskiewicz contributed research to this story a mob of right-wing radicals armed with Molotov cocktails tracer ammunition and stones attacked hostels for contract workers and asylum-seekers in the city of Hoyerswerda in the state of Saxony and terrorized residents for five full days filled with frightened people from Mozambique The attacks made international headlines not only because it raised the specter of xenophobia in the states that once belonged to East Germany but also because local residents simply looked on as the violence escalated Police in Hoyerswerda were unable to get the situation under control and ultimately officials at the hostel removed the foreigners and took them elsewhere Twenty-three years have passed since the attacks that brought shame on the entire country the city of Hoyerswerda has announced its plans to open a new hostel in a special education school that closed last year and is currently being renovated to provide accommodations for asylum-seekers the first refugees could move in by the end of January Engaged local residents and politicians are trying to ensure that history does not repeat itself. But their task is not an easy one; Germany is currently experiencing an influx of refugees  not seen since the 1990s and xenophoia is once again beginning to infect the debate The far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) an organization that has been described by Germany's domestic intelligence agency as xenophobic and anti-Semitic has sought to capitalize on such sentiment in recent months In November and December, the party organized protests against a new reception center for asylum-seekers who have just arrived in Germany in the town of Schneeberg, which is located near Hoyerswerda. And in Berlin's Hellersdorf district, right-wing radicals have been trying to stir up trouble  over a new asylum-seekers' hostel there since last summer Similar sentiments have been brewing in Hoyerswerda recently as well According to Germany's domestic intelligence agency the Office for the Protection of the Constitution It is not unusual for Hoyerswerda to make headlines with fresh racist attacks A Facebook page titled "Just Say No to the Hostel in Hoyerswerda" already has more than 2,100 likes The NPD has also mailed out pamphlets about the asylum-seeker hostel And xenophobic stickers have been applied to walls and lampposts of the group Hoyerswerda Helps with Its Heart says the prejudicial stickers don't stay up for very long "Our people and many others scratch them off," he says The Protestant reverend was one of the first members of the group which was founded in November just a few weeks after the news went public that a new asylum-seekers hostel is being planned The group's aim is to help inform both asylum-seekers and local residents about developments "Right now we're working on a city map in six languages for refugees to show them how to find the police and other important authorities," he says Hoyerswerda residents can also subscribe to a newsletter or call the group's hotline to get their questions answered the group plans to hold an open house at the asylum-seeker's hostel after it opens Michel says his impression so far is that the majority of local residents aren't even interested in the issue of the hostel "They're registering it and moving on with their normal business," he says District officials say they chose the city because a school belonging to the county had closed enabling them to save money and that the xenophobic attacks in 1991 in Hoyerswerda played no role in the decision "We have to find some place for people to live," says Gernot Schweitzer of the county administration The county is also seeking to open other accommodations for asylum-seekers in other cities county officials say they are contacting local residents and educating them about the facilities "We need to be good about communicating," he says He adds that local residents should be given the opportunity to become better acquainted with how their new neighbors in the community live Preacher Michel also feels strongly there's no chance of the events of 1991 recurring in the city "There was considerable turmoil after the Berlin Wall fell -- many people were unsettled and even the police didn't know exactly what they had authority over." He believes there was a feeling at the time that people couldn't truly express themselves -- a situation that no longer exists today "Today we can show Hoyerswerda's better face," he says police in Hoyerswerda sealed off steets in the city City officials responded by relocating the refugees Radicals even attacked the buses that were driving the asylum-seekers away The ugly attacks became an international scandal will now become the site of the first asylum-seekers' housing since the 1991 attacks Construction is currently being carried out and the first residents could move in by the end of the month A former classroom is given a fresh coat of paint The furniture also orginates from the school classrooms Remodeling work inside the school building: A picture of the continent of Africa hangs on the window Books and games are stacked up on the floor in the disused school Director Jeff Bullock said the zoo is working to import a male leopard from Zoo Hoyerswerda in Germany and is currently waiting on permit approval from the U.S it’s just a matter of managing the logistics of transferring him to Greenville," Bullock said in a release Monday Zoo Hoyerswerda’s 10-year-old male leopard is part of the cooperative breeding program for Amur leopards He was recommended to be transferred to the Greenville Zoo specifically to breed with Jade “The Amur leopard is probably the most endangered species that the Greenville Zoo works with,” Bullock said “This is a very important move for the population as it will introduce another bloodline into the North American population.” It's estimated that roughly 65 Amur leopards exist in the wilds of Eastern Russia About 190 leopards live in captivity in Asia There have only been 14 Amur leopard births in the last year Jade recently became the zoo's sole leopard after her sisters Emerald and Clover were transferred to other zoos as part of their species' breeding program FLOOD RECOVERY:Farmers applaud as House overrides Haley farm aid veto Emerald left Greenville Friday for the Sedgewick Zoo in Wichita Clover was transferred to Roosevelt Park Zoo in Minot The triplets came to the Greenville Zoo in 2011 and were to stay here until they matured The zoo has been a longtime supporter of Amur leopard conservation efforts “The public will be hearing a lot more about the conservation efforts going on at the Greenville Zoo as we have taken a long look inward to focus on why we’re here,” he said Germany -- A small Slavic minority in eastern Germany is keeping alive a long intricate tradition of hand-painted Easter eggs that's been passed down by Sorbian families for generations At an Easter egg market in Elsterheide near the Saxon town of Hoyerswerda around two dozen egg painters showed off their trade on Sunday...The Associated PressAndre Sibilski fixes Easter eggs on a robina tree with currently 7,000 painted Easter eggs in Saalfeld A team of so-called Friends of Saalfeld's Easter egg tree continue the yearly tradition with up to 10,000 Easter eggs around two dozen egg painters showed off their trade on Sunday Werner Zaroba said he learned the craft from his grandparents "we would paint the eggs to give them to our godparents as an Easter present." then using fine knives he scratches delicate patterns on the surface of the eggshell Zaroba says it takes him up to seven hours to decorate one egg alone Connect with the Southeast Missourian Newsroom: Ferat Koçak’s car was set on fire in Berlin’s diverse Neukölln neighborhood a revived version of the neo-Nazi group the National Socialist Underground while at his parents’ house in Berlin with his family he saw that his car was engulfed in flames He called the fire department and rushed his family out as the blaze from the car spread toward the building Even before he received information from the police a German of Kurdish descent with a long beard dyed in the anti-fascist colors of black and red was certain what had happened: He was being targeted by the far right for his anti-racist A Google Images search of him later revealed that this ensemble—paired with Adidas Sambas and occasionally a cap and scarf—is his typical look He had told the story of that night to German media countless times We were sitting in the office common room of Die Linke just off a leafy cobblestone street in Neukölln the neighborhood where Koçak lives and where It’s a neighborhood that’s important to him His Twitter handle is “der_neukoellner”; until recently he also went by this name on the encrypted messaging app Signal A year after the attack, in March, Berlin’s Criminal Investigation Department received an anonymous email that seemed to confirm Koçak’s suspicions claimed to be a member of NSU 2.0—a revived version of the National Socialist Underground a neo-Nazi group responsible for at least 10 murders between 2000 and 2007 Koçak was the perfect choice for a neo-Nazi: He is an ethnic minority who is also a vocal anti-racist activist; he is a left-wing politician He took the fire as a warning to get him to stop his political work and activism after his mother had a heart attack in the days following the fire following an uptick in immigrants fleeing a civil war in Syria But these seemingly well-intentioned policies have created dangerous situations where people of color are forced to reside in regions that may be hostile to their presence and where they face greater threats from neo-Nazis and fascists The neighborhood is among the most diverse in the city Middle Eastern and Vietnamese restaurants line the streets between pockets of cafés and bars frequented by the city’s creative class of artists and young people who want to associate with that milieu neo-Nazis roaming Neukölln might be akin to a right-wing paramilitary cell maintaining an organized presence in demographically diverse artist havens like Bushwick if the neighborhood is diverse by German standards it is nevertheless predominately and historically white Koçak believes that the violence is a racist reaction to recent demographic shifts Rising rents in Berlin’s bohemian former punk hub white German creatives into North Neukölln displacing that neighborhood’s immigrant population further south “South Neukölln is not like North Neukölln “The gentrification in the north changed the population in the south This was one reason they started the attacks.” And even asylum seekers who avoid violence in Germany must still face difficult living conditions and years of isolation trapped in inhospitable small towns As the far right and the neo-Nazi movement it harbors burgeon in Germany “They are zones to which foreigners have limited (or no) access.” Novotný traces the history of far-right extremists’ no-go zone aspirations in Germany back to the ’90s decades before conservatives popularized their own version of the term and the population either have enough neo-Nazis in their ranks to enforce the boundaries of the no-go zone or contain a critical mass of sympathetic locals who turn a blind eye to the violence used This conception is a grim neo-Nazi pipe dream But evidence suggests that something resembling the no-go zone has existed in parts of Germany A 2007 report conducted by the Office for the Protection of the Constitutional Order in the German state of Brandenburg counted 17 of what it called “fear zones.” According to Novotný the report describes the areas as “zones where extremists have managed to cut out all other groups from participating in social life,” and where the far right has “excluded other (non-neo-Nazi) groups from participating in or attending any cultural or other activities.” They didn’t want to lend credence to the idea that neo-Nazis had gained enough power to determine who gets to travel in and out of some areas; in a certain way to do so would be to shore up neo-Nazis’ story of their own success But they were also reluctant to totally deny the existence of such regions The fact that people of color often live in or near areas that could be considered no-go zones makes discerning the boundaries of these areas even more challenging Johannes Kiess, a professor of sociology at the University of Siegen in Germany who studies right-wing extremism and its impacts, summed up this tension. Take the town of Bautzen, known as a rural right-wing stronghold in eastern Germany “I don’t reinforce the right-wing narrative that there’s a no-go area in a town like Bautzen,” Kiess said because “that’s exactly what they want.” What’s more although there is a strong far-right presence neo-Nazis “are not everywhere.” At the same time Different people also experience different Germanys Whereas I and other people of color take trains freely around the country because there are a lot of areas between Leipzig and Berlin where Nazis live.” sending asylum seekers to different regions according to quotas calculated by tax receipts and population numbers second only to the center-right Christian Democratic Union It is also the second-most-represented party in the eastern German states of Brandenburg While it was founded as a conservative party taken over by an insurgent internal wing that established a firmly antisemitic “Far-right extremism and far-right terrorism are currently the biggest danger for democracy in Germany.” The German reunification process was a flash point for the ascent of German neo-Nazis. One of the highest-profile attacks happened in 1991 in Hoyerswerda where neo-Nazis invaded buildings where Vietnamese and Mozambican workers were living an onslaught that eventually escalated into a full riot 230 foreigners had to be bused to a nearby army base for their safety Violence to that degree hasn’t recurred in Hoyerswerda since 1991 but in 2006 the youth wing of the NPD held a commemorative demonstration the result of an amendment to Germany’s Basic Law that limited who is eligible Asylum seekers still face abuse from racists in the general population they also suffer abuse from the government Schmidtke was on his way to a weekly meeting for female asylum seekers who had been placed in Hoyerswerda where they lived in what he referred to as a “camp”—crowded dorm-style living quarters in which multiple families are packed on each floor The recurring meeting was set up by a local civil organization as a space for the women to gather with one another and sometimes to speak with local volunteers and social workers such as Schmidtke But it was as much a refuge for the women away from their cramped living quarters a place to commiserate over coffee and pastries Hoyerswerda is not particularly picturesque—there is little charming Bavarian architecture and few of the quaint old churches we usually associate with small German towns I’d worried that the refugees might be apprehensive about talking to a journalist out of fear of jeopardizing their asylum status they were—the names by which I refer to them here are pseudonyms—but most were eager in the hopes that someone out there might be able to do something to make their lives less harsh Among the two dozen or so women at the meeting two felt comfortable enough with their English to speak to me: Isha from Pakistan and Samina from India and their asylum status had been stuck in indefinite limbo for more than half a decade Isha recalled the hostility she faced in Hoyerswerda before she even made it inside the camp She wasn’t sure where to get off the bus and asked the driver if he could help He told her to “speak Deutsch” and get her kids off his bus Though Isha and Samina said that they felt on edge around Germans in Hoyerswerda—people are often cold and sometimes outright antagonistic—the bulk of their tribulations has come from Saxony’s government aspects of the asylum process that Schmidtke and Samina recounted sounded more like a sadist’s fantasy vision of a Kafkaesque bureaucracy than rational immigration policy While most people in the camp are stuck in asylum limbo—not deported but also not granted residency status or sometimes even the ability to leave—a few occasionally choose another option: the hardship commission But this path is like making a double-or-nothing bet with your immigration status The hardship commission is widely considered a last hope for appeal The Ministry of the Interior and Sports of Lower Saxony found that the rejection rate for hardship cases averaged 43 percent between 2016 and 2020 It’s possible this number is higher in states For those who opt out of the hardship commission route their passport becomes effectively meaningless Asylum seekers whose applications are denied receive a state-issued document commonly known as a Duldung The ID has a large red line across it signifying “a temporary suspension of deportation,” which means that while its holders get to stay in Germany experience significant negative mental health outcomes A 2017 paper—straightforwardly titled “‘It’s Like Fighting for Survival’: How Rejected Black African Asylum Seekers Experience Living Conditions in an Eastern German State”—found that eastern Germany consistently forces refugees to endure abysmal accommodations Twelve Black Africans living in refugee accommodations in an unspecified eastern state described similar situations to the Hoyerswerda camp: stuck in their camps for years at a time sharing a single room with as many as six others and sharing a stove and a single bathroom with many more Isha’s husband was not granted the same asylum-seeking status she was and was barred from entering the country He told her and the kids to go without him when will Papa come here?’” For most of our conversation “My husband has applied to come here so many times Isha was only one of multiple women who broke down in front of me as they recounted their time at the camp She didn’t speak English but was undeterred so I pulled up Google Translate on my phone translated “What do you want to talk about?” into Somalian I have a little boy here who is sick,” the translation of Somalian read when she handed it back “I have diabetes and high blood pressure.” Typing messages in Google Translate was a strained way to hold a conversation She was facing the same problems as Samina and Isha: cramped quarters and declining health “You have a hard job,” I said to Schmidtke as we walked out of the center because a lot of people actually have to live it,” he said I know that I’m just there for a couple of hours I don’t have to live like they do.” Schmidtke paused for a second to consider what he’d said “That’s why a lot of people quit this job after a couple of years.” in protest of the party voting with the AfD in Thuringia But other centrist party leaders have tried to make even more aggressive anti-immigration a nonprofit group focused on tracking the rise of right-wing extremism in Saxony explained that he’s frequently observed immigration officials singling out minorities sits on a major railroad route for refugees coming out of Ukraine police usually check only the documentation of Black people “despite the fact that there are a lot of other refugees on the train,” not least Ukrainians fleeing the war The eastern states of Saxony and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern the asylum seekers I met had won an immigration lottery by being allowed into Germany in the first place But even though this might have been true on paper “It was not a good decision to come here,” Isha told me In 2018, when the AfD held a rally in Berlin the party’s 5,000 supporters were drowned out by 25,000 counterprotesters People with whom I spoke in Germany expected an AfD rally scheduled for the first weekend in October last year to go similarly At the rally, thousands of AfD supporters looked on at a small stage just in front of the Reichstag. German flags stuck up above the crowd. A smaller number of people waved flags for the AfD stronghold states of Thuringia and Saxony. A noticeable number also held up Russian flags. Less fashionable and more conventional than typical Berliners, the people in the crowd looked something like those I was used to seeing in suburban Texas. I wandered around trying to speak to rallygoers, but was met with a dour and suspicious “Nein” every time I asked if they spoke English and were willing to answer questions—unusual for Berlin, where more than half the population speaks English, often fluently. I was the only person of color I could see as I walked from group to group, though Koçak later told me he was surprised to see a few people of color in the part of the rally where he was. Although everyone I tried to speak with was nice enough besides their terseness, after 20 minutes, my self-preservation instinct kicked in. I stuck out like a sore thumb. I headed to a back corner of the rally, where some other journalists I knew had stationed themselves. her starchy white pinafore gleaming against the powder blue sky which adorns the entire facade of a tower block in Germany's former communist east will more than likely head for the horizon joining the more than a million-strong exodus from the former German Democratic Republic since the Berlin wall crumbled Beset by rampant unemployment and shrinking population the eastern states of Germany are suffering a deep-seated malaise The symptoms are easy to spot: empty streets social problems and a burgeoning sympathy for the far right All these problems are apparent in Hoyerswerda a small town in the deep east of the country not far from the Polish border Back in the days of communism it was home to a coal mining company that lured workers from far and wide Today it is better known for dereliction and decline - since the Berlin wall came down in 1989 said he would leave today if he had the money "Most of my friends have moved if they can Here there is no work about," he said "I did my back in working in the mines but even if I was healthy About one in four people are unemployed in Hoyerswerda - three times the average rate in west Germany Reports suggest that the real jobless figure including those on retraining schemes or early retirement Such bleak prospects mean that people of working age continue to pack their bags and look for a brighter future elsewhere Combined with Germany's falling birthrate and ageing population this is having a devastating effect on the local social structure are over-represented among those migrating What they leave behind are towns littered with empty buildings places where high streets have the atmosphere of an out of season resort The trend makes a mockery of Chancellor Helmut Kohl's post-reunification promises of "blossoming landscapes" in the east statistics show a wide gap in opportunities and income This discrepancy has occurred despite the huge cashflows eastwards since reunification But public opinion in the west has turned against the hefty subsidies with especially harsh criticism coming from poorer western regions - places that have home-grown problems of industrial decline and migrating populations Today state funds target a small number of thriving eastern towns and cities known as "lighthouses" These are the exceptions to the trend of eastern gloom places like the booming urban centres of Jena and Leipzig and those in parts of Saxony that have earned the region the name Silicon Saxony Here the local community bears all the hallmarks of the economic slump widespread disillusionment has created a fertile breeding ground for rightwing extremists the town came to epitomise the post-reunification rise in racist violence after crowds of neo-Nazis attacked a home for asylum seekers injuring 30 people in successive days of clashes Statistics show that the extreme right is a stubborn headache for many of the former communist states Recent months have seen an increase in violent crimes committed by neo-Nazis - and support for far-right groups has propelled them into the political mainstream In September the NPD (National Democratic party of Germany) won seats in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's regional parliament after taking a surprising 7% of the vote which has praised Hitler and has an openly racist stance is also represented in the local parliament in Hoyerswerda's state of Saxony painted a bleak picture: "Anyone who is young and active leaves Left behind are the social problems: drug abuse There's a deep feeling of hopelessness." she has worked with young people to find different uses for the newly emptied parts of the town centre one of the 50s and 60s tower blocks that were erected during the boom years of the coal mining firm Black Pump - the former motor of the local economy who moved to the New Town with her parents in 1968 "These blocks were once the epitome of modern living," she said some 6,000 New Town flats have been demolished and many others stand empty A stone's throw from the father and child mural bulldozers shift piles of rubble that include twisted window frames and lumps of wallpapered concrete There are new grassy patches of wasteland where family homes once stood the streets winding off the main square in the Old Town are freshly anointed in pastel shades For every shop that is open there is another one boarded up or with a To Let sign One handwritten sign reads: "To rent immediately - very cheap" Ms Baumeister said the closure of shops was something the city would have to get used to "Here politicians still talk about growth," she said It's a painful process but it is the reality But while demographers and politicians fret about the east's future environmentalists point to a silver lining dust from coal mines dyed snow settling in Hoyerswerda a dirty charcoal Today east Germany's fresh air and low population density is attracting new inhabitants - wolves and lynxes are back Former eastern states are also witnessing the fledgling development of ecotourism has discovered a new sense of purpose as a green haven for city dwellers Hoyerswerda's town mayor, Horst-Dieter Brähmig, who has just retired, sees tourism as a big chance for his region. He describes the process of depopulation as a "growing-up phase that we can deal with" and hands over glossy brochures about a venture to create Europe 's largest artificial lake district golf and science-fiction floating holiday apartments are all featured "Tourism was never our big plan but this is a great opportunity We've already had a rise in the number of visitors to the area," said Mr Brähmig Karl looked sceptically at the glossy tourist pamphlet "That isn't the Hoyerswerda that we know," he said "If I was going on holiday I'd rather go to Spain." This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page You don't have permission to access the page you requested What is this page?The website you are visiting is protected.For security reasons this page cannot be displayed A white Bennett's kangaroo has been born at Hoyerswerda Zoo The one and a half year old mother named Schneeflöckchen is also an albino The young animal has spent a lot of time sleeping in its mother's pouch A white Bennett's kangaroo has been born at Hoyerswerda Zoo the birth took place around eight months ago "It has only been apparent since around the beginning of January that Flöckchen's cub also has white fur," said zookeeper Ronny Häusler on Wednesday the offspring had occasionally poked its head out of the pouch the cub is still quite sleepy and enjoying its time in its mother's pouch "Not much longer and the cub will be too big for the pouch Then we can also see what sex the offspring is." Schneeflöckchen came to the Lusatian Lakeland from Tabor Zoo in the Czech Republic in May 2023 She integrated quickly and well into the group and got used to living with emu lady Hilde there are now seven kangaroos living in the accessible enclosure at Hoyerswerda Zoo Nothing is known about the kangaroo's father It is therefore also unclear whether he is also an albino or whether the mother's genes have proved to be dominant Schneeflöckchen probably came to Hoyerswerda when she was already pregnant Kangaroos can delay the birth of their offspring if living conditions are not suitable Bennett's kangaroos - also known as red-necked wallabies - originate from south-eastern Australia and Tasmania They owe their name to the reddish-colored fur on their neck and shoulders Albinism is a rare phenomenon in the animal kingdom they are often the target of potential predators there is a large population of white Bennett's kangaroos on Bruny Island in southern Tasmania The kangaroos there have no predators and can pass on the mutation from generation to generation © 2009 - 2025 DieSachsen.de | Alle Rechte vorbehalten | Entwickelt mit publizer in Sachsen um Ihr unglaubliches Erlebniss auf DieSachsen.de weiter verbessern zu können In The Electronic Revolution (1970) Burroughs describes how cut-up tape recordings turn sounds into political weapons He sums up this approach in a powerful image: “Riot sound effects can produce an actual riot in a riot situation brought about severe legal restrictions of the basic right to asylum Right wing ideas even started spreading in the music scene the male was once again the hunter and the female’s place the kitchen—notions I thought long overcome by my parent’s generation Atari Teenage Riot sought confrontation with the audience from the start The constant hugging and “we all love each other” attitude that defined the techno scene did not reflect the political reality was a direct response to the racist attacks of Hoyerswerda It basically sounded like Underground Resistance with breakbeats We considered the sound of Detroit the only aspect worth maintaining within techno music which became more and more chart-orientated minimalist style accurately conveyed the way we felt we always thought in terms of cinematic concepts We saw ourselves as film characters and tried to translate those into music We never just met in the studio to make music We meticulously constructed our music from the very beginning We wanted to turn emotions into sound and we wanted people to understand these emotions This can only be achieved through deliberate musical translation Berlin’s image abroad resembled a setting for Blade Runner Americans and Japanese thought of the reunited Berlin as a bizarre projection a post-apocalyptic wasteland populated by carnival characters in fantastical uniforms And Atari Teenage Riot provided the suitable soundtrack. The breakbeats kept getting faster and harder “Tötenposse Rides Out” from my 1992 EP SuEcide already had 172 bpm a quantum leap compared to the usual 120-130 bpm in techno or 140 bpm in British breakbeat slicing them up and changing them around so we wouldn’t always have to set up shop with the same old loops People thought it sounded like a cross between breakbeat and hardcore and started calling it breakcore It didn’t sound good and it didn’t get the point of a digital From these considerations the idea for Digital Hardcore emerged as a name for both the genre and the label At first we were still mixing the breakbeats pretty far behind the 909 kick drums close to how UR did it when using a breakbeat It might have sounded a bit trashy with UR but nowhere near as distorted as became our habit As a former punk rock guitarist I knew we could turn up the energy this way By distorting digital sounds with analogue effects they gain more overtones and become fatter and more extreme similar to how punk bands traditionally mixed their music That’s what distinguished ATR from the usual techno productions of the time you have to focus on a frequency range between  1 and 5 kHz the sounds of Low On Ice have always reminded me of John Carpenter film scores I created those sounds by manipulating reverbs And I did it with the kind of equipment traditionally used in acid house productions A lot of people thought Low On Ice to be a techno album but there’s actually not one straight bass beat on it nothing you can directly associate with techno but quite the opposite: deceleration and isolation Imagine skating on thin ice and breaking through You can’t find the hole anymore and slowly drift with the current beneath the ice The sun is still shining but there’s no way back That album is still valid for me to this day as a commentary on the techno euphoria back then In 1995 it was obvious to me that techno was over techno meant exploring a new musical world nobody knew yet And that is still my basic idea: there is a goal which is not clearly defined and we want to get away from things being defined and predetermined we have to create soundscapes that are no longer based on last century’s pop music principles I consider pop and mainstream music strategies of exclusion: minorities have to adapt if they want to participate Pop advocates like to claim that pop is for everyone But they can be dissipated by a new kind of music Read our evolving archive of Berlin’s musical history by visiting our Berlin Experiment page retargeting and for playing out personalized content and advertising on Telekom sites and third-party sites including information on data processing by third-party providers and the possibility of revocation can be found in the settings and in our privacy information Here you can continue only with the necessary tools Accept all Continue with necessary Detailed privacy preferences You can give your consent to categories or display further information and select specific cookies In a new series on our sporting legends and their feats of yesteryear motorcycle racing hero Brian Reid looks back on his rough and ready route to the top as a double World champion All smiles: Brian Reid at home with long-term partner Lynn in Banbridge Old habits: Brian Reid on an RG500 Suzuki for the parade lap at the Tandragee 100 Our Sporting Lives and Times with Jim GraceySat 9 Sep 2017 at 03:30What a week for the Reid family rides Dr Devious to victory in the Epsom Derby rides his Yamaha to victory in the Isle of Man Junior TT by that era's first cousins of Northern Ireland sport It would be a sensation now in today's multi-media world But to two men with their spiralling sporting futures quite literally in their hands That is if you consider normal for jockey John first past the post in 40 top class Group One races and a 1988 Arc De Triomphe success on Tony Bin many hundreds of motorcycle race wins on roads and circuits worldwide earning him the nickname 'Speedy Reidy' and those Formula Two World title wins on the roads in 1985 and '86 They thought their races would run and run But the end came in painfully similar circumstances and A bad fall from his mount in a 1999 race first put retirement on John's radar But he recovered from his injuries and saddled up again for another two years before bowing out to become President of the Jockeys' Association in 2001 his bike hit the wreckage from a crash that claimed the life of the rider in front of him we sip coffee in the kitchen of his secluded country home in the hills between Dromore and Banbridge as Brian (60) recalls the aftermath of that dark day that ensured he would never race again I was in a wheelchair for three months and in such poor shape I couldn't even clean my teeth by myself," he says "In 20 years of racing bikes and occasionally coming off them I'd a good career so at least I had a wealth of memories to ease me into retirement." Lynn succumbed late to the motorcycle racing bug meeting Brian at her first event at Kirkistown going along with a friend as a reluctant spectator The answer is in a lasting relationship over three decades during which Lynn grew to love bikes as well steadfastly supporting Brian and now their son Simon (21) currently leading the Irish Short Circuit Championship Simon also runs a Barista in Newry while another son is a personal trainer and self defence instructor did the couple have any qualms about Simon following in his tyre tracks Lynn nods in agreement as Brian relates: "When Simon announced he was going to race bikes 'Are you sure?' I explained how difficult a sport it was and he already knew the dangers he has the passion and we are supporting him in the same way my mother and father "Of course we are nervous but he showed he has talent by winning the Ulster Schools and Irish Motocross Championships and he has converted that to tarmac racing." Brian's decision to hurtle between the hedges at 100mph-plus would have been more of a surprise to the late Winnie and Drew Reid who shared cousin John's interest in a different kind of horsepower McGregor was one of road racing's famed Dromara Destroyers of the '70s and '80s alongside Raymond McCullough and Trevor Steele and it was a dream come true for Reid to graduate into their ranks as he grew up to make his own name in the sport He recalls: "I was only three or four when I began watching Ian I really looked up to him and he took me everywhere I couldn't wait to become a racer in my own right and I always remember my first race at St Angelo airfield in Fermanagh in 1976 followed by my first road race in the Killinchy 150 at Dundrod on a 250 Yamaha." it was four years before Reid recorded his first road race win on a 125 Morbidelli at Carrowdore I was a rank amateur with just a car and trailer to transport my 250 Yamaha That's how it was for most of the riders in those days "Joey was the only one who had proper support He could always get his bikes funded and I realised if I was ever going to get anywhere in this game his first attempt at the famed Isle of Man course ending in a spill at Cruickshanks Corner in the 1978 Manx Grand Prix Newcomers race But his star was in the ascendancy and by 1981 with support from the late Mick Mooney of Irish Racing Motorcycles who provided him with a 350 Yamaha Reid created history as the first rider to win three Irish road racing championships in the same year And soon it was decision time… his home-based engineering business or a full-time career racing bikes "I had to make a choice and my passion took over," he explains simply That choice was Reid's and motorcycle racing's gain To this day he is revered by fans of the sport and always visible to them at the North West A man who quite literally left skin in the game also remains a staunch supporter of road racing in the face of increasingly vociferous opposition when fatalities "Racing started the minute the second bike was built and it will never stop," he contends "Racers have an inbuilt desire to go faster than the next guy to get the best out of their machines and to win races You can never make it completely safe but everyone involved knows and accepts the risks." yet he experienced his share of spills as well as thrills the worst being his career-ending accident and the high point his first World Championship win in 1985 "I had raced in Barcelona and won in the last but one round I was leading the World Championship but had to wait six weeks for the next and final round which was the Ulster Grand Prix at Dundrod," he reflects everyone was making me favourite so there was a great deal of expectation That made the wait even more nerve-wracking "Thankfully it did go well and I got across the line for the greatest feeling of my racing career." followed by a second World title a year later has become legend in motorcycle racing conversation he was being talked about as our only living double World champion until he was joined on the pantheon by young Jonathan Rea and soon the lad from Ballyclare will earn his own place in history with a third successive World Superbike title virtually secured there is a genuine admiration and huge amount of goodwill towards the younger rider soon to overtake him If that 1985 World title win was Reid's greatest moment He explains: "I was watching on TV as Jonathan went out for the race to win his first World title in Spain two years ago and couldn't believe he was wearing my racing helmet to take to Spain but thought it was to be a prop or for display takes off the helmet and tells the TV cameras he is wearing it in tribute to me What a thoughtful thing to do at a time like that." It was a surprise but it shouldn't have been to a man who knew Rea was destined for the top from an early age as he reveals: "My son Simon was on the Red Bull Rookies programme with Jonathan and it was clear he was not only an exceptional motorcycle racing talent "Simon came back once from a trip to Spain to tell us how Jonathan had ordered a meal for them all in a restaurant - in Spanish They were only about 14 or 15 and I remember thinking here is a lad preparing himself for bigger things and so he has proved Reid lives comfortably these days in his old family home spending his time in retirement restoring old racing bikes "I came across it by sheer accident," he smiles I traced the history back and was overjoyed to discover it was Tom's." There is certain poignancy in his voice too as Reid discloses that he was close to the racing accident that claimed his friend's life at the North West in 1979 made a fortune from the dangers they faced with their £100,000 all mod-con motorhomes Reid does not begrudge today's generation their money or comforts "Anyone who makes a good living from motorcycle racing deserves everything they get who rates Michael Dunlop the greatest of today's road racers while advising we should keep an eye on up and coming English rider Peter Hickman "I look at these guys now and how well they are treated Even when we were going to win World Championships we travelled in our vans with the bikes in the back "Michael's uncle Joey had this old Mini with a removable front passenger seat he used to take out and replace with a plank which he slept on I didn't mind travelling in vans but I didn't like sleeping in them unique and down to earth for all his success "Once he set out by fishing boat to the Isle of Man but didn't get out of Portavogie harbour where it sank - with one of my bikes on board Joey and his brother Robert were rescued but the bikes were on the bottom "So good luck to the lads today with all their comforts how some of them can turn up just a few minutes before a race and throw a leg over a bike that has already been prepared for them I always liked to see the bike I was going to ride "The bikes were packed into the van outside our house the night before we were due to race at Aghadowey," he says The police later called to say the van had been found crashed and the bikes were wrecked "A Dutch mechanic we had at the time had taken the van He just left a note to say sorry and scarpered." he remains one of the rare head starts Speedy Reidy never caught up with.