Population decline in Germany is deepening the east-west divide, boosting support for the AfD party. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing BBC News.
Jan-Niklas Hustedt was born in East Germany in 1989, just weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He calls himself a "wendekind" (child of the turning point). Now 36, he recalls how that time changed his community.
Many businesses in the communist east struggled or collapsed after reunification. "You hear all the stories," says Jan-Niklas. "Lots of people left because the opportunities were in the west."
In the 35 years after reunification, Germany's overall population grew by 3.8 million (5%) driven by immigration. But in the five states of the former GDR, the population fell by 16% (excluding East Berlin). Saxony-Anhalt, where Oschersleben lies, recorded the most dramatic decline at 26%.
Now, across large swathes of the rural east, further population falls are expected as the post-reunification "brain drain" combines with low birth rates. On the government demographers' map, the deep blue areas with starkest drops are concentrated in less urbanised parts of the east. Only Brandenburg, encircling Berlin, bucks the trend.
Longer term, as Germany's population ages, the federal statistics office says there will likely be fewer people by 2070. For eastern states outside Berlin, that's projected under all scenarios.
Demographic change may be driving up support for the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a party classified as right-wing extremist in Saxony-Anhalt. In this state, the AfD could win power in elections later this year, a potentially seismic moment for Germany.
In 1989, after the Berlin Wall fell, East Germans poured west. But it was also a time of enormous loss for easterners whose socialist society was absorbed into the capitalist west.
The GDR was a centrally-planned, state-owned economy. The regime relied on strict censorship and the Stasi. However, East Germans got subsidised housing, generous childcare and guaranteed employment. But the economy was inefficient and debt-ridden, so privatisation was brutal and led to mass unemployment.
Graphs show fertility rates in the east plummeted while there was a huge exodus west in two main waves. The first began right after the wall fell, the second peaked in the early 2000s. Dr Katja Salomo, a sociologist at the University of Kassel, says the second wave was "smaller in scale but no less consequential because it was highly selective: young people, highly educated people and especially women were more likely to leave."
One reason for women leaving was that the east's female workforce was treated as an "afterthought" during reunification, argues Katja Salomo. "And so they went to West Germany and got jobs there."