Word: eisenach
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...unemployment rate of about 14%, double that in the old West Germany. And as a new economic crisis strikes - this time a global one - Halle isn't immune. Its economy has crashed in the past six months. Across the region - but especially in places like the town of Eisenach, where a new auto industry has been built up over the past few years - the latest downturn is biting, though local officials stress that at least their position is better now than it was. "We're certainly in a crisis," says Peter Haimann, president of Halle's Chamber of Commerce...
...that boom has come to a halt. On Oct. 13 Opel suspended production at Eisenach for three weeks to help sell off a stockpile of excess cars, hundreds of which crowd a parking lot inside the factory complex. Opel electrician Katrin Huber, 29, isn't happy about this vacation. "The plant shutdown is going to cost me more than $400," she says. "But worse is that we just don't know what the future holds. I'm afraid that the plant could close...
...Eisenach, Germany Great historic forces once spread from Eisenach, where Martin Luther translated the New Testament into German to drive the Reformation. Today, this town of 40,000 is notable for the more prosaic fact that it's at the receiving end of a chilling secular influence: slowing demand for automobiles. Opel, a European subsidiary of the beleaguered American giant General Motors, is the town's biggest employer - and when Opel's in trouble, so is Eisenach...
Opel was one of the first Western firms to move east to Eisenach after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and it pulled an army of suppliers and service companies in its wake. On Adam Opel Street, Lear Corporation makes seats for the Corsa, while parts makers Mitec AG and Robert Bosch are across town. Uwe Laubach, head of the local chapter of the IG Metall union, says as many as 900 temporary workers in the local auto industry have lost their jobs in recent weeks. "The situation is dramatic," says Michael Lison, head of the industry association Automotive...
...global crisis that began in the U.S. "The situation is frightening and we just don't know how bad it will get," she says. "People order smaller bouquets. The hotels still order arrangements. And there are funerals, of course. But for many people, flowers have become a luxury." Eisenach faces the unsettling prospect that new cars are now a luxury, too. - by William Boston