Eastern Germany Beckons

In several cities in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, some senior citizens walking in shopping areas have had small packets pressed into their hands. They looked like the small boxes that medication often comes in.

But these contained no free aspirin for arthritic hands or pills for aging hearts, rather they had information about a new program to entice older people to pack up their belongings and move east, to the city of Leipzig in the eastern German state of Saxony.

"It's simple," said Siegfried Gallitschke, a project manager at the city-owned LBW, Leipzig's biggest landlord. "We offer them low-priced living, lower than they can have in the west."

The project to pull the grey set eastwards came after LBW looked at its tenant rolls, and the big blank spots on them. The company has some 20,000 empty apartments on its hands. After the fall of the wall, a collapsing economy in eastern German led to a mass exodus from the city, and a resulting high vacancy rate. While there has been a net increase in the number of people moving to Leipzig since at least 2002, there have not been enough new arrivals to fill all the vacancies.

So LBW decided to do some targeted marketing. It could not offer much to young professionals, since jobs in Leipzig are in short supply. The city's unemployment rate currently stands at 17.1 percent. It could, however, offer something to seniors, who are ready -- even in the autumn of life, for a new adventure.

"Seniors are very flexible," said Gallitschke, who came up with the seniors idea. "They don't need jobs, they don't have children who are in school, and many would like to move to a new city."

Cost of living

The big selling point, however, is money. According to Gallitschke, seniors willing to move east can save up to 20 percent on monthly rent. Their living expenses overall are cheaper, he added, and Leipzig offers an abundance of affordable cultural activities as well as a surrounding countryside full of lakes -- ideal for day trips.

Gallitschke said the new campaign to bring seniors east has raised a good deal of interest in the three cities in North Rhine-Westphalia where it has been unrolled -- Wuppertal, Remscheid and Duisburg. Around 400 seniors have contacted LBW about the campaign and two bus trips set up for July to bring seniors east for a tour of their potential new home have sold out. Another is scheduled for September.

Those interested fall into roughly three groups: there are those who once may have lived in Leipzig and want to return to their roots; others whose children have moved east for work and who want to be close to them; and a third group of people who no longer have family ties where they live now and are free to do as they please.

"They aren't tied down," Gallitschke said. "We offer them the room, they design their new freedom."

Purchasing power

Germany's population is graying. The country's birthrate is one of Europe's lowest, around 1.4 women per child, and the percentage of the population over 65 years of age continues to climb. Demographers from the Berlin Institute for World Population and Global Development have calculated that by 2020, between 25 and 36 percent of the population will be older than 60, depending on region.

"That means you have fewer consumers overall, fewer producers, fewer inventors and so on," said Reinhold Klingholz, director of the institute.

But LBW prefers to see the silver lining in this silver generation, at least in the short term. Retirees have steady, secure incomes and, with their growing numbers, are a growing force in the economy. Leipzig could profit from the influx of the aged.

"In Germany, it's becoming clearer that the buying power of this group is especially strong," said Lisa Neuendorfer, a marketing analyst who specializes in age issues at the research firm IFAK. "For every company that offers a product or a service, it's a very important group, because it has money."

Not happy

Not everyone is happy about Leipzig's attempt to tempt seniors into leaving their homes and heading east. Local politicians in the target cities in the west are "reacting kind of strangely," according to LBM's Gallitschke.

Indeed, a spokesman from the city of Remscheid told the Süddeutsche Zeitung daily that he is amazed that Leipzig would spend money on a project like this.

"The campaign isn't exactly going to help improve the relationship between the two cities," he said.