Volume 39, Number 7 · April 9, 1992
Outsiders
By Ian Buruma
The Lutheran church—rebuilt after the war—is one of the few attractive buildings in Hoyerswerda, a small town north of Dresden. It lies in what is known as the 'old town'—a bleak little place with a market square, a modest hotel, and a narrow street of preserved artisans' houses, decorated with stucco carvings of glass-blowers and the like. The sky is more or less permanently stained yellow by the brown-coal mines which are the town's main business. The large mining enterprise is called the Schwarze Pumpe, the Black Pump. The Black Pump workers live across the Black Elster River, which divides the old town from the new town. The new town was built after the war. It consists of rows and rows of concrete housing blocks, of the kind you see in the slums of east London, Peking, or Katowice. Hoyerswerda was one of the most prosperous towns in the former German Democratic Republic.
Feature, 5283 words
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