The three-piece band was doing its best to lift spirits with relentlessly upbeat pop songs and bursts of oompah music as rain plummeted down on a bleak autumnal day. A handful of people sat scattered at tables set up under an awning beside some food stalls and a small ferris wheel. Four middle-aged women swayed together in unison to the music, doing their best to bring the Oktoberfest vibe to their town, while a few other brave souls swigged pints of lager or munched on their sausages.
But it will take more than a few blasts of brass, bratwurst and pilsner to lift the storm clouds over Wolfsburg. For this prosperous place, about two hours’ drive west of Berlin, is a company town like few others, built from Nazi roots off the back of Volkswagen — “The People’s Car Company” which overcame its fascist birth to become the world’s highest-earning motor manufacturer. Now, however, it is in serious trouble as persistently sluggish management considers closing plants in their homeland for the first time in their history.
Such is the scale of this crisis — labelled an “earthquake” by the local paper — there are even mutterings this mighty car giant might emulate the high-speed crash of Nokia, the Finnish behemoth dismantled and sold within a few years of being the largest maker of mobile phones. Tensions are rising as the powerful IG Metall union, which just began another round of negotiations with managers, insists all German sites must remain open, even as there have been furious clashes with bosses at internal meetings. ’The situation is not good,” said one worker. “I am 54 so my working life is nearly over and I hope to get my pension in three years time but this is very, very worrying for Wolfsburg. I hope this plant will not shut.”
That kind of statement seems unimaginable in this city made by Volkswagen. Step out of the station and you see the world’s biggest car plant, three times the size of Monaco and where 70,000 employees churned out almost half a million vehicles last year. In front of you squats a futuristic science centre designed by Zaha Hadid, which serves as a sculptural reminder that this otherwise rather dour place has some of the highest average incomes in Europe thanks to cars. Even that bustling main shopping street is named after Ferdinand Porsche, creator of the iconic Beetle car and founder of a globally famous marque.
Almost half the workforce in Wolfsburg helps make cars, the highest proportion of any city in a country with 47 other places heavily dependent on this core industrial sector. “Volkswagen not only stands for economic prosperity, but also has a strong emotional component,” said the city’s mayor Dennis Weilmann. “Many families have relatives or acquaintances at VW and the majority of Wolfsburg residents have been driving a Volkswagen since their first car. Volkswagen also invests in many different areas of society, from art and culture to voluntary work and leisure events. It is therefore completely understandable that the current news is causing uncertainty among citizens.”
The city and car company have grown up together. Wolfsburg — twinned with Luton — was created in 1938 for one of Adolf Hitler’s pet projects: the mass production of cars for the people. It was originally named after the Kraft durch Freude Wagen (Strength Through Joy Car), and seen as a model Nazi town, only to be devastated by Allied bombs during the Second World War, after slave labourers were forced to manufacture rockets and military vehicles. Then, a British army major kickstarted production of the quirky and eventual global best-selling Beetle. Three generations later, the city is home to about 125,000 people with a university and football team — sponsored by VW, of course — that once won the Bundesliga.
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