BONN (dpa) – Berlin is broke. Cash-strapped Munich has implemented a cost-saving programme, and Hamburg and Cologne have their financial woes.
But confounding gloom-mongers who feared that it would revert to its former status as a provincial backwater, the former German capital Bonn is thriving.When former Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the parliament decided to move the nation’s capital to Berlin 12 years ago, urban pundits predicted Bonn would wither on the vine after the many government ministries, institutions, and foreign embassies pulled out.But it never happened. And in fact, three years after the transition began, the city on the Rhine is booming unlike many others in Germany which are grappling with a stubborn recession.According to a report in the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the former capital is one of the few major cities actually to record population growth since unification, adding 3,400 new citizens to the one million living in the greater Bonn area.One reason for the rise has been the fact that 11,500 new jobs have been created in the city since unification. With over four million people unemployed in Germany, Bonn can boast that its jobless rate is just seven per cent, 2.7 per cent below the national average.Symbolic of the new Bonn is the ongoing construction of the Deutsche Post’s future company headquarters, now heading for completion this fall.The Post Tower and its futurist glass dome will rise to 162.5 metres, forming a spectacular structural landmark. The Tower itself will house about 1,800 office workers, with another 2,900 in the annex of the Deutsche Telekom’s subsidiary T-Mobile.The telephone giant also plans to build office space for another 4,500 employees.As a United Nations city in Europe rivalling Geneva and Vienna, Bonn has attracted a total of 11 U.N. organisations employing nearly 500 staffers ever since former U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali hoisted the blue flag in the city on June 20, 1996.The United Nations volunteers (UNV) leads the U.N. organizations that have opened offices in Bonn.Others include the U.N. framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the U. N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and UNESCO’s International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training.Bonn’s stature as a venue for world political events was also enhanced late last year when it hosted the international conference to set up the new interim government for Afghanistan.International organizations in Bonn include the Environmental Law Centre, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Centre for European Integration and Development Research, and the Fair Trade Labelling Organization International (FLO).A high-rise building named after former parliamentary president Eugen Gerstenmaier is currently being renovated to accommodate the ever increasing number of U.N. staffers.Likewise located in the erstwhile German capital is the Center for Advanced European Studies and Research, under the acronym “Caesar”.With a budget of nearly 400 million euros, Caesar employs some 180 scientists investigating technological transfers between the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology.Moreover, the Federal Accounting Office and the Federal Cartel Office have relocated in Bonn, joining six federal ministries that have remained.And there are still 23 embassies in Bonn, many of them from Third World countries apparently unable to afford the move to Berlin.And Deutsche Welle, whose worldwide radio and television broadcasts are known as the “Voice of Germany”, is planning to move its 1,000 staffers from their Cologne headquarters to new offices in Bonn’s old government district next spring.Bonn has also become a popular tourist centre because of its top- rated hotels and restaurants and cultural attractions such as the Beethoven House honouring the birthplace of the Ludwig van Beethoven, which displays archives, scores, portraits, and musical instruments dating back to the time of the composer.The “small town in Germany” – the title of a spy thriller by John Le Carre which took place in Bonn – has its own opera house, theatres, cabarets and pop and jazz galleries.Its giant Congress Centre has become a popular location for international conventions. All this is reflected in the fact that Bonn remains among the top 20 tourist cities in Germany.
