Ten Years After - Help Me (Live)
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When the Berlin Wall in 1989, most cars that swept westward from East Germany were plastic and fiberglass Trabant Trabant was a symbol of the exodus, but it quickly became an endangered species RFE RL correspondent Jolyon Naegele reports on the legacy of Trabant in the city of Zwickau, where it serves to build.
Zwickau, Germany; November 9, 1999 RFE RL - The last Trabant rolled off the assembly line at the plant in Zwickau Sachsenring there are eight and a half years The 1991 model differs relatively little from the first of more than three million Trabant made since 1957 made of a synthetic material called Duroplast, he was shaky and he was strong.
Trabant had a top speed of 100 kilometers per hour, and two-time 13 2 kilowatts engine sounded like it belonged to an old motorcycle rather than a car attempt by East Germans to build a motor powerful were canceled several times by the Soviet Union in the framework of cooperation Comecon, Moscow insisted on having a monopoly on powerful engines.
Long before the development of the Trabant, Zwickau was a city auto jack, home since 1904 to the Horch line of luxury cars, trucks and fire engines of the founder of the company, Horch August began making the Audi in Zwickau from 1910 After the Soviets occupied Germany in the Second World war, the communists nationalized factories Horch and Audi has transferred its activities in Ingolstadt in the American occupation zone in 1957, the communists Horch the new name of the Sachsenring, and began producing trabis.
Original car factory 95 years old in August Horch is now a museum with a vast collection of limousines Horch pre-war and Audis as well as virtually all variations of the Trabant ever made, from the first to the final, the 3,096,099th.
The collapse of the communist regime in East Germany in 1989 has enabled the production of a Trabant with a stronger twice 30kW engine 1050 cc engine as the traditional two-time but it was too late markets to export - primarily Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and Yugoslavia - and the east German market had dried up with the sudden availability of cheap imports from West Germany and Far East Trabant was doomed.
In May 1990, Volkswagenwerk West Germany began assembling a new car called Polo, Sachsenring in a hotel in the Moselle, 10 kilometers north of Zwickau The agreement was reached a year earlier, and intention was to mount the Polo Trabant motors But once the Berlin Wall was opened in November 1989 as spokesman for VW Sachsen in Moselle, Guenter Sandmann noted, the plans have a life of their own.
It all started with the Polo, with the idea to give the Trabant successor at that time it was believed that the GDR would be able to remain a sovereign, although market-oriented status We tried to mount Polo here It worked for about a half We quickly noticed year that people who were used to drive the Trabant for 30 or 40 years would really be something more - as Wartburg, a Skoda or a Lada But these models were unavailable or importation could be people suddenly felt the need to have a classic like golf, not just the Polo.
Sandmann said VW responded quickly, and in 1991, VW started producing the Golf Mosel, first with the Polo, but seven months later completely replacing the Polo Today, the huge factory, one of most modern car plants in Europe annually produces 260,000 VW Golfs and Passats for delivery worldwide Last July, the millionth VW made in Zwickau-Mosel is out of the assembly line, but the Trabant was not forgotten.
The Mayor of Zwickau, Rainer Eichhorn, speaking with a strong focus Saxon said the Trabant remains a popular symbol of his city.
First, of course, today Trabant, as in the past, is really a part of our lives in the street and every year to meet the International Trabant drivers, we want here - the last attracted 30,000 visitors - we see that the Trabant was not about to be killed.
The annual festival Trabant in the local aerodrome is intended especially for owners to show their relics to trade in spare parts - increasingly hard to find.
After ten years, Zwickau finally managed to halt the exodus of inhabitants, triggered the exodus westward and stimulated more by the end of production Trabant Mayor Eichhorn attributes the turnaround to a combination of urban renewal and job creation, however, unemployment in Zwickau is nearly 20 percent.
VW-Moselle employs 5,500 people today, less than half the number of people employed to construct the Sachsenring Trabant But part of the workforce Trabant consisted of guest workers in North Vietnam Many of them returned home or changed jobs.
High unemployment seems to be a contributing factor to the strength of the post-communist PDS party of democratic socialism, which has a quarter of the seats in the municipal council of Zwickau, behind the Christian Democrats and right in front of the Social Democrats.
Local officials also attributed the strong presence of PDS to widespread feelings that life under capitalism has become complicated and the only easy answers are offered by the former communist A city official compares this response with that of a zoo animal which, after being let out of his cage, wander around town Frightened by traffic and the lack of experience in hunting their own food, the animal finally returns to the safety of the zoo.
Ten years after the East German Trabant, is, German.