Eisenhüttenstadt, Ex-DDR, 2009
It was called ‘the ideal city’. In the 1950’s, Eisenhüttenstadt (formerly Stalinstadt) was the flagship city of the DDR. Built around the gigantic Eko Stahl industrial iron & steel complex, its 50,000 inhabitants dedicated themselves to, according to the official propaganda, transforming Russian iron and Polish coal into ‘steel of peace’.
20 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, Eisenhüttenstadt boasts 3 huge shopping centres.While Eko Stahl now belongs to steel giant Arcelor-mittal which employs only 2,700 people. The 5,000 people who work in the nearby service industry depend entirely on the locally produced steel. This former model socialist city,although transformed into a paradise of mass consumption, can not resist the difficulties which eat away at the former eastern bloc lander: poverty, unemployment and exile.