Former East Germany sinks into economic backwater

"There are only old people and unemployed people left in Halle," Ms. Gall says. "You can see it when you walk on the city streets. When new stores open, you know which ones will go out of business. A fashion shop, for example. There aren't enough young people in Halle to keep such a shop in business."

The search for work is not the only reason young people are leaving eastern Germany. Because most large factories in the east have been idle since the restructuring that followed reunification, most of the on-the-job training programs, vital in Germany for those wanting to learn a trade, are in the west.

Otavio Seyer is training to become an electronic tool technician and travels 720 miles round trip each weekend between his training program in the Krauss-Maffei locomotive factory, near Munich, and his hometown of Potsdam, near Berlin. Seyer would like to stay in Potsdam after graduation, he says, because he feels out of place in Bavaria and sometimes has trouble understanding the local dialect. But, he is becoming resigned to a future in the west. "In the area of Potsdam," he says, "there are no jobs to be had. If you do get a job it will probably be poorly paid. Here, it is pretty much 100 percent certain that I can get a job after my training program."

Politicians have begun to take notice of the growing gulf between east and west. Bundestag president Wolfgang Thierse created a stir last year by stating flatly that the east is on the brink of economic crisis, a statement he repeated last week. Edmund Stoiber, a candidate for chancellor in this year's elections, opened his campaign in February with a "fact-finding" tour of the five eastern states.

Representative Ostrowski, too, is looking for solutions. "Nothing less than a radical change is necessary," she says. She has proposed moving western factories to the east and redrawing state borders to increase the east's political clout.

Ironically, Germany's economic success stories are exacerbating the problem. Both Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, two states in the south of Germany, have more job openings than workers to fill them. The so-called "bacon belt" around Munich, with its many high-tech and media firms, is a magnet for Germans from other areas and boasts the lowest unemployment rates in the country.

Meanwhile, the Bundestag voted earlier this year to extend the "solidarity pact" that sends close to $80 billion eastward each year, a policy that is unlikely to change soon, says Rudolf Hickel, professor of economics at the University of Bremen and author of two books on reunification.

"I think that the transfer of money from the west to the east will continue for a very long time," he says. "I don't think we can look for an improvement in the situation much before 2019 or 2020."

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