Half in Germany, Half in Poland

There are three divided towns along the German-Polish border: Frankfurt an der Oder, Guben in Brandenburg, and Görlitz in Saxony. All three are nestled on the Oder and Neisse rivers. Poland's accession to the European Union (EU) means that these towns, divided after 1945, could soon begin to grow together again, just as the two parts of Berlin have been growing together since 1990.

The conditions could hardly be better: Not only do borders dissolve, but the towns move from the fringe of Europe to its very center. Commerce and trade, which have only been possible in one direction to date, are open to new markets. Both literally and metaphorically new roads and bridges are being built.

Residents of Görlitz, Frankfurt an der Oder and Guben have heard many times about the chances offered to them by EU enlargement. Reality paints a different picture though. Especially Guben features all the typical problems common to this border region. These problems will most likely continue to exist after EU expansion.

A study carried out by the Leibniz Institute for Regional Development and Structural Planning on citizens' views on Europe in both German Guben and Polish Guben produced sobering results: EU enlargement remains a distant idea, people's real lives are not taken into account, it says.

An earlier study conducted in Guben that researched the importance of European expansion for the economic area at the border was equally pessimistic. The economic development of the new Europe at best will be spread out between Berlin and Poznan or Berlin and Wroclaw. The region in between simply will miss out on any of the progress.

Guben's history is that of an "industrial village," where the textile industry put down roots. But the population switched sides in 1945. Those Germans who had been living to the east of the Oder river had to move westwards. Many settled on the western back of the river Neisse, with the hope of being able to move back home again. What is now the Polish Gubin saw many people moving in who had been dispelled from eastern Poland.

In contrast to Frankfurt an der Oder or Görlitz, Guben's city center was located on the eastern side of the river. When it was destroyed it was never rebuilt. On the western side, however, a makeshift new center emerged. The residents of Guben and Gubin lost their roots and they never managed to recover them.

After all, in the GDR the industrialization of Guben continued. Workers from all across the country came in droves to the town to work in the textile combine. Even guest workers from Poland came. For 30 years "the problem zone was appeased," as Jörg Dürrschmidt, sociologist at the Leibniz Institute described the situation.

German reunification changed this relatively abruptly. Today, only one-tenth of Guben's industry still remains. The owner of what remains of the textile combine - only 800 of the former 8,000 staff continue to be employed there - had been in Indonesia until very recently. Decisions about Guben as an economic location are being made somewhere else. This is globalization for the people of Guben.

Meanwhile, the city is shrinking continuously. The young and creative are moving away; Guben has lost more than 8,000 inhabitants, bringing the total down to some 25,000. Almost one-fourth of the community are without a job. The apartment vacancy rate stands at more than 12 percent. The town's old and new parts are equally dreary.

Guben became well-known in Germany when in 1999 a young Algerian asylum seeker was left bleeding to death in a neighborhood of concrete prefabs after right-wing extremist youngsters had chased him until, out of mortal agony, he jumped through a glass door of a housing estate.

Guben, for Dürrschmidt, an eastern German who studied at an English university after the fall of the wall, is an example of "how gradually civil society is thinning out to be replaced by collective resignation." In the end, all that is left of a community spirit is when local residents set up a militia to protect themselves. People are not interested in one another any more.

Those who find the reality of Guben depressing only need to turn to Poland to encounter something more dismal. The people from Guben think that people from the Polish Gubin are even worse off than they are. Every trip across the river, however, is like a journey into one's past: "The Poles are much more sociable and are still able to have a good time," the people of Guben say. Apparently something is happening here that sociologists like to call "revitalization of patterns." West Germans, too, regarded their trips to the East after 1989 as journeys into their own pasts. They, too, were amazed about the way East Germans dealt with each other, about their ability to celebrate. They knew how to party.

The people from Guben also regard their Polish counterparts as competitors once Poland enters the EU. Incidentally, the people here believe that their mentalities are so different that nobody is prepared to learn the other's language or to try to solve practical problems together.

While there are vacant apartments on the German side there is a shortage of flats on the Polish side. But people from Guben do not want Poles to live in their flats: "We don't want to pay for this, too."

And what do the Poles think? According to a survey, some Gubin citizens have become rich after years of cross-border trade. Others, however, became even poorer.

One rich Polish woman said she would no longer cross the border to Germany, saying that she did not need "to be treated like a Pole." The border guards were still the same as in the GDR times, and they were the "old fascists," she added. Although she does buy western goods, she does through a mail-order catalogue. She dreams far beyond the border region, past Europe. Her target is America. This is where her sons are supposed to go, and maybe one day she will follow them.