Eisenhüttenstadt

Hi Rachel,

We made a trip out from Berlin to Eisenhüttenstadt, almost on the Polish border. Its an 'ideal' town which was founded in 1950 as a model town alongside a steel mill. Some of the architecture is Stalinist Neo-Classical, and the later architecture Plattenbau (pre-fabricated)

After reunification the competition from West German steel makers and the collapse of markets in Eastern Europe meant they had to lay off workers. In 1995, the steel mill was privatized and sold to the Belgian steel maker Cockerill-Sambre, now part of Arcelor Mittal. As a result the population has gone from 53,048 in 1988 to 34,818 in 2005. It is unbelivabley quiet, and we were there on a saturday afternoon.