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Municipality administration vetschau
Axel Müller, Mayor of Vetschau
At the town hall of Vetschau which is located in a nicely restored castle, we were welcomed by the Mayor of this municipality, Bürgermeister Axel Müller. In the room where normally weddings take place, the group learned about the main features of this municipality, which has experienced some drastic transformations in the last 15 years after German reunification.
Being first officially mentioned as a market place in 1302, Vetschau grew alongside the European Salt Road. In the 20th century metal industry (locomotive construction) developed and in 1920 the small town had 3200 inhabitants.
rom the early fifties, when lignite mining was intensified in the region, the city grew from 5000 to 15000 inhabitants by the late eighties. After closing down the mines in the early nineties (loss of 3000 – 4000 jobs in a very short period of time), the municipality experienced a decrease of several thousand people to the current figure of 9.600.
With this development, a series of buildings are underutilized and will or have to be demolished or transferred into other use patterns.
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How to maintain the social infrastructure, which is not fully needed any more, is a central problem for many municipalities in eastern Germany. Decreasing birth rates (in less than 10 years from 150 to 50 per year) aggravate this situation.
Today, agriculture, machinery construction, food processing and ceramic production represent a diversified structure, although unemployment rate is still high. Regarding tourism, the Mayor stressed that Vetschau is located at the edge of the Spreewald and therefore has to find its own place.
Being located close to the highway the town could together with the neighbouring municipalities develop the function of “entry gate” to the Spreewald area.
With 41 employees in the direct administration and another 97 at kinder-gardens, schools or the construction and maintenance services, the town administration has managed a huge structural change in the last 15 years. Today, Vetschau functions as a sub-regional service and basic shopping centre as well as a location for food processing companies. Specially in this field, the Mayor presented the concept of the “Spreewaldfarm”, where cereal production, pig raising and meat processing combine with each other to increase value adding in the region through production chain management.
The municipal administration directly supports all kind of events like the opening of the asparagus season, the cucumber day or the strawberry festival, or by financial means or by engagement of the municipal staff. |
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