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Fears of a post-enlargement tide of cheap labor are compounded by deeply ingrained prejudices against Poles that Mayor Rolf Karbaum says are "widespread" among Görlitz's older generation. Despite the official line about a close socialist fraternity, East Germany and Poland were uneasy neighbors for most of the postwar years and people maintained few day-to-day contacts across the Neisse. Material goods were scarce in the G.D.R. but scarcer still in Poland, and East Germans deeply resented Polish shopping forays across the border. Out of isolation grew mistrust. When the border was opened again in 1990 the stereotype of the "lazy, thieving" Pole had taken deep hold in people's minds, says Karbaum.
While most Germans here may believe that a bigger E.U. is not necessarily better, a small but growing number think it also offers a lot of opportunities. Two years ago Kurt Hoffmann, 65, a retired Siemens engineer, decided to launch a business in Poland because he "wanted to gain a foothold in the local market before it starts to boom after E.U. enlargement." After only 12 months, the tile shop he operates in the city of Luban, 32 km east of the border, is in the black, attracting customers from as far away as Jelenia Gora and Dresden with its exclusive assortment of Versace and Meissen tiles. A second shop, which he opened last year in Bogatynia near the Czech border, is doing equally well.
Over the eastern bank of the river in Zgorzelec, optimism about E.U. accession is far more prevalent. "I am absolutely for it," says Andrzej Luka, a 38-year-old civil servant. "A border town like ours will certainly gain in every respect, especially economically." Sharing that belief with 55% of Poles, Luka and many other Zgorzelec residents hope that E.U. subsidies and the foreign investment they expect to flow into the region will create new jobs and further bring down unemployment that, at 13%, is already 5% lower than in 1995 and almost 10% lower than that in Görlitz.
E.U. expansion, local entrepreneurs believe, will eliminate much of the red tape that currently hampers cross-border trade. Kazimierz Gregory, 42, the owner of a wood products plant in the village of Dluzyna, 15 km west of Zgorzelec, sells 80% of his wares — staircases and other wooden construction elements — to German clients. Delivering them, though, is a drag since his trucks often have to wait for hours until they are cleared through customs. Says Gregory: "These problems, I hope, will vanish when we join the E.U."
Even among Zgorzelec's 36,000 citizens there are skeptics. Jozefa Pieta, who runs a 43-hectare farm in Dluzyna, believes Polish farmers "are doomed" because they'll be unable to compete with the larger, more efficient farms in Western Europe. We "are just not on the same level as the farmers in the West," Pieta complains. Many slaughterhouses in the area have already closed down, unable to meet the E.U.'s exacting standards for hygiene and quality control. As a result, ever fewer local farmers are breeding stock and the number of cows has dwindled to just a few hundred. "Soon we'll have to go to the zoo if we want to see a cow," quips Pieta's son Andrzej.
Poles used to worry that Germans from the former Prussian province of Lower Silesia — large parts of which went to Poland after World War II — would flood in after E.U. enlargement to buy back property that used to belong to them, but those fears have been largely allayed. "Few people in Germany will want to return," says factory owner Gregory. "And most of them are old, so worries that they'll re-annex the country are exaggerated." Like many other Poles, Gregory seems to be much more pragmatic than his neighbors in Görlitz when it comes to laying the ghosts of the past to rest. "If a rich German wants to buy my plant and gives me a reasonable price — why not?" he jokes. "Come on over!"
Assuming the E.U. does eventually admit countries from the east, the best chance the two towns have for prosperity lies in a revival of the historic region of Lower Silesia, once renowned for itsflourishing mining and manufacturing industries. "The growing together of the regions is what the E.U. is all about," says Görlitz's Mayor Karbaum, "and it makes more sense for us than for anyone."
The first important steps on the journey toward ever closer union between the two towns have already been taken. A binational "Eurocity" since 1998, Zgorzelec and Görlitz are increasingly cooperating in cultural, economic, environmental and political matters. The towns' fire brigades recently conducted their first joint training session, a cross-border commission coordinates such efforts as building a second road bridge across the Neisse, and sports teams from both sides of the river play each other regularly. If this sounds like small progress, "that's fine," says Zgorzelec's Mayor Miroslaw Fiedorowicz. "If we ate with a bigger spoon, we'd only choke."
Perhaps the best sign that the two towns are really in the process of becoming one again is the popularity of Dwarf House, the bilingual kindergarten where children from both towns play and learn together. "It'll take time before the walls in people's heads come down completely," says Mayor Karbaum. The parents and teachers at Dwarf House, and others in this town that history divided, are making sure new walls don't go up in the first place.
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— With reporting by Tadeusz L. Kucharski/ Zgorzelec
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