Eisenhüttenstadt: A city oozing life

To talk of splendor would be exaggerated. Socialist architecture, however, was able to create more than large prefabricated concrete apartment blocks in uniform grey. Exquisite Meißner porcelain decorates the house facades on the Lindenallee in Eisenhüttenstadt. The historical residential areas have intricate timber frames and graffito finishes.

"In the class war, it was important to demonstrate that socialist workers in communist countries could live very comfortably," city guide Eberhard Harz says. And Eisenhüttenstadt, which literally translates as Ironworks City, had a lot of workers.

At the height of production, the Eisenhüttenkombinat Ost (EKO), the former East Germany's biggest steelworks, employed some 18,000 people - 12,000 of whom were based in Eisenhüttenstadt, according to a spokesman for the steelworks' current owners, the global steel company ArcelorMittal.

Model town now a place for nostalgia

As an engineer, Eberhard Harz wanted to establish a large hot rolling mill in Eisenhüttenstadt, but, then, as the 64-year-old describes it, East Germany ran out of steam.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were jokes that East Germany was still alive and kicking in Eisenhüttenstadt. The spell was quickly broken, however, and big changes soon arrived - for the EKO steelworks and for the local people. Today Eberhard Harz works as a tourist guide, showing visitors around the extraordinary architecture of Eisenhüttenstadt.

It is a place for nostalgia. The city on the river Oder is regarded as Germany's biggest heritage site by surface area. Designed on a drawing board, it was created in 1950 as the first socialist town on German soil. "Steel, bread and peace" was its maxim.

In 1953 the model city of the German socialist state of workers and farmers was called "Stalinstadt." It was supposed to compete with the industrial Ruhr area in West Germany. In the 1960s, after Joseph Stalin's fall from grace, the town was unimaginatively, but appropriately descriptively, renamed Eisenhüttenstadt.

Extreme changes followed the fall of the Berlin Wall

Harz says that with its shops, restaurants and theater, Lindenallee - formerly named Leninallee - was created as the main arterial road. In the former East Germany, people liked to come here because there were more things on sale than elsewhere.

"For former East German living conditions, the supply situation here was much better than most places," Harz says. The Kaufhalle shop on the Lindenallee for instance was open until 10 p.m. And there was 24-hour child care available for people working shifts.

In other cities the main roads usually lead you to a castle, but the Lindenallee leads people directly to the gates of the huge steelworks - you can see EKO's blast furnaces from the road. Today the steelworks is home to a branch of the American fast food chain Burger King, which would once have been regarded as the worst kind of class enemy. This place has become symbolic for the extreme changes that Eisenhüttenstadt has undergone in the 25 years since the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Seeking a new image

The town, known affectionately by its residents as "Hütte," has not been a model city for a very long time. A small fraction of its former glory has been preserved in a former nursery that today serves as the Documentation Centre of Everyday Life in the GDR.

The city otherwise seems to have succumbed to a kind of depression. Those who are young and qualified leave. As a result, Eisenhüttenstadt has lost nearly half its inhabitants since German unification and the subsequent restructuring. Where once more than 50,000 people lived, only some 27,000 remain and that number is expected to continue to decline.

The number of people employed at the EKO steelworks has been reduced to 2,500. Recently ArcelorMittal claimed that the number of employees at the steelworks had increased and it forecast further growth for the industrial region. But inside the gates of the steelworks there is little evidence of this promised economic upturn.

"Manfred," who does not wish to use his real name, is sitting on a wooden bench in the "city center": the shopping mall. He say he was employed by the EKO steelworks from 1957 to 1992 - "I worked lots of overtime." Now, apart from the steelworks and a paper mill, there are no jobs in Eisenhüttenstadt.

"This town has hit rock bottom," the 80-year-old pensioner says. Every shop at the mall is advertising cut prices and sales. Despite all efforts the hardware store had to close and in the coming spring the big supermarket is expected to go out of business.

"Our pensions are so meager," Manfred tells us. People can admire the goods in the shop windows, but yet "everyone lacks the money to actually buy something." Back under communist rule, it was the opposite: You had money, but the shop shelves were usually empty.

Manfred lives in a residential area in the historical part of Eisenhüttenstadt. When asked what makes Eisenhüttenstadt an interesting place to live or visit, Manfred mulls it over for a long time and comes to the conclusion that "there is nothing worth seeing here."

Hollywood came calling

But what about US actor Tom Hanks? The tourist office in Eisenhüttenstadt is still trying to cash in on Hanks, who first visited the town on the Oder back in November 2011 on a day off from shooting "Cloud Atlas" at the movie studios in Potsdam-Babelsberg. The movie star booked a guided tour of the city. He has since returned, most recently last year.

His visits always cause considerable excitement, not just in Eisenhüttenstadt but in all of Brandeburg state. Hanks liked Eisenhüttenstadt, and a short while after his first visit he raved about what he called "Iron Hut City" on a US talk show.

Today the tourist center offers t-shirts with "Iron Hut City" emblazoned on them. Another t-shirt reads: "Hast Du Hollywood mal satt, komm nach Eisenhüttenstadt" - a rhyme that translates to "Whenever you've had enough of Hollywood, come to Eisenhüttenstadt." Managing director Kathrin Heck thinks the campaign has been successful. "You have to use whatever you can to advertise," she says. And Hanks' visit did have a positive effect: 2014 alone saw an increase of 100 guided city tours booked, and the town counted 30,100 overnight stays.

Eberhard Harz conducted the guided tour for Hanks, which was of course a private tour. "Yes, I was Tom Hanks' tour guide," the pensioner says proudly to whoever is interested. Apparently a friend of the actors had suggested he might want to visit the former "Stalinstadt." So Harz got to show Hanks relics of the demised East German socialism. "He was fascinated," Harz says. And the actor didn't put on any airs and graces.

Restoration and demolition

Harz, who was born in Cottbus, worked for a long time at the building management association Eisenhüttenstädter Gebäudewirtschaft GmbH. As managing director he was one of the main players when it came to negotiating the comprehensive restoration of buildings within the town, which was financially hemorrhaging. Not every historical worker's house could be saved: On the contrary, since 1990 about 6,100 apartments - some of which were supposed to have been protected - were torn down. Another 475 are to follow by 2017, according to Christiane Nowak the head of the municipal infrastructure department.

By contrast, a lot of money was invested in restoring other buildings, like the former workers' bar Aktivist, which also won the German Prize for Conservation and Preservation. The walls were replastered on many former workers' quarters, which were also given insulation glazing and new modern heating systems. Now those apartments "are very much in demand," Harz says.

Bye, bye Eisenhüttenstadt

"Our city shines in a new light": With this slogan the town is trying to attract investments worth millions. Restoring the inner city is said to have improved quality of life. But not everyone is happy, as can be seen in ominous alliances like the Facebook group Bürgerwehr Eisenhüttenstadt - a citizens militia that has attracted attention with their right-wing statements, targetting migrants in particular, objecting to the fact that Eisenhüttenstadt happens to be home to the state's central reception center for refugees.

But even the so-called political middle ground in the city tends to drift to the far right. Growing crime in this area close to the Polish border region is often cited as a reason. In state elections a record-breaking 21.3 percent in Eisenhüttenstadt voted for the Euroskeptic Alternative for Germany party. On the day of the elections, a local paper proclaimed that "the first Socialist city on German soil is no longer red."

Eberhard Harz is not worried about these changes. He says that even though there are car break-ins, there are not nearly as many as there were during the 1990s. Nevertheless, he surprised us by revealing that he, too, left Eisenhüttenstadt 12 years ago. He shrugs and says that "at some point I just had this need to get away from here."