An American tourist visits Gardelegen

A Second Opinion on Gardelegen:

We recevied the following letter from a man who lives in the Gardelegen vicinity. He gave us permission to publish his letter.

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

mein Name ist Jörg Straßburg, ich bin 40 Jahre alt und ich wohne in einem kleinen Dorf in der Nähe von Gardelegen. Leider spreche ich kein englisch, da ich in der Schule nur die russische Sprache erlernt habe. Mit Interesse las ich Ihre Homepage (ich mußte Sie mir mit einem Programm übersetzen lassen). Die geschichtlichen Ereignisse der Isenschnibber Feldscheune waren mir von meiner Schulzeit bekannt. Aber einige der schrecklichen Bilder sah ich zum ersten Mal.

Ohne Frage ist dieses das schwärzeste Kapitel der Geschichte meiner Stadt. Etwas enttäuscht war ich von dem Bericht eines Touristen, der Gardelegen besuchte. Dieser Bericht ist nach meinem Empfinden recht einseitig gehalten. Ich muß zugeben das es noch einige zerfalle Heuser gibt, es ist aber nicht möglich eine ganze Stadt in 15 Jahren nach Fall der Mauer zu sanieren. Es hätte mich gefreut wenn auch die schon sanierten Hauser in diesem Bericht erwähnt worden währen. Sein wir doch mal ehrlich in Amerika gibt es ja auch zerfallene Heuser und Stadtteile in einigen großen Städten der USA und Sie hatten keine 40 jährige kommunistische Herrschaft. Das es in Deutschland fremdenfeindliche Tendenzen gibt steht außer Frage, aber 90 % der Deutschen sind nicht so. Auch in Amerika werden Leute von einem kleinen Teil der Bevölkerung wegen ihrer Hautfarbe diskriminiert. Gardelegen 2005 mit dem Gardelegen 1945 zu vergleichen finde ich daher ein etwas zu schnell geurteilt.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Jörg Straßburg

Here is another letter which we received about Gardelegen which gives a different perspective. The author gave his permission to publish this letter.

Hello,

my name is Vincent Aniol and I am from the city of Magdeburg in Central Germany. I read your web site about Gardelegen and I noticed a couple things that seem a little odd to me. I have relatives in Gardelegen, so I know quite a bit about the town. Since you are a tourist, I can understand that you percieve Gardelegen as a dirty town with a "run-down and shabby look". You also wrote that the people in Gardelegen are unhappy and there is no joy at all. Although I might think a little different about that I cannot criticize you for writing that, since it's just your opinion. However, there are also a couple things that could be improved. See this e-mail as a help
and not as a personal attack or something of that kind :-).

First of all, the overall description of your report is mainly negative. The GDR was actually not under a communist, but under a socialist regime. That's really not a big difference, but socialist would be more correct to say. Your report gives me the impression as if nothing has changed. We don't have a Nazi regime anymore, nor do we have a communist or socialist regime. This is all over now and Germany is looking forward. In fact, Germany has become the most important country in Europe and is one of the most important nations in the world. Gardelegen might not be the prettiest town and the modernization progress might be slow, but you did not mention that the government puts a lot of money and effort into the modernization of small towns throughout Germany. You also have to understand that it is not that easy to rebuild everything. Since most cities and towns in Germany are really old, they have buildings and places that are protected by law. So you can't just tear down everything. You should make all that clear in your report.

I also think that "leaning out of the window" is not a German custom :-), this is just a stereotype. You made it sound like "The people are leaning out of the windows and watching the street, because they have nothing better to do and because they are hopeless." You may want to change that, because it is just not right. The last thing I noticed is about the ICE and the freeway. The ICE does not stop in Gardelegen, because it is a bullet train that only stops in major cities and not in small towns. So this has got nothing to do with the appearance of the town, it's only because Gardelegen has only about 13,000 residents. That's the whole reason :-).

The freeway does not pass through the town, because Gardelegen is a former walled town. You got that right. However, you might have noticed that freeways never pass through small towns in Germany. It's just not like in the United States. Our freeways don't go straight through towns! Instead we have smaller "city freeways" that circle the towns. Those streets are often called "Ring" or "Ringstraße".

All right, I hope I could help you a little bit. I just wanted to give you my opinion about the web site. That's all.

Have a nice day!
Vincent Aniol

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This page was last updated on March 29, 2007