My Hometown Gardelegen

By Nino Hinte, corrected and edited by K. Lange

Gardelegen is a little city in northern Saxony-Anhalt (Sachsen Anhalt). The region is called “Altmark”. Today more than 11500 people live in Gardelegen. 50 years ago it belonged to the German Democratic Republic. Many things were different then than they are today, for example the educational system, the appearance of the people and things you can do in your spare time. In this time (1956) teenagers had no computer or mobile phone. TV was very rare, too. Often they played soccer or did some other activities in sport clubs. These clubs were paid by government taxes so the teens could do sport for free. Today many young people are “couchpotatoes”, they only sit at home and don’t do any sport. A reason could be that today many sport clubs are very expensive. The consequence of which is that 30% of our teens are too fat. They eat too much candy and fast food. 50 years ago that was not possible because sugar was very expensive and fast food wasn’t invented.

But everything was much better than it had been in the 1940’s. The “Second World War” was over and the people had much more food and other things than during the war. The destroyed city of Gardelegen was rebuilt and many more buildings were built, like schools and churches. Today many ruined houses are still to be found in Gardelegen. Some ruins will still get restored as some others will be kept original.

In the years after the Berlin Wall collapsed, Gardelegen has become a beautiful city with many companies. 40 years before there was absolutely no industry there, only some cows and pigs in an animal farm. For some years one company has been producing some parts for cars (VW) and another company has been manufacturing wooden parts for IKEA. That’s a great economical gain for the whole region because many people have been employed. In the 10 years before many workers had lost their jobs because many companies had run bankrupt. Now the workers have got a new chance... .