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2009-07-28 04:00:51
By Lesley Curwen
Presenter of Business Daily, BBC World Service Radio, in Schwedt
A metallic smell, and a jagged collection of thin towers and convoluted silver pipe work mark out the PCK oil refinery.
It is a vast site which stretches for several kilometres near the eastern German town of Schwedt.
White jets of steam fizz from the pipes. It is an impressive sight, a hymn to industrial architecture built on the border with Poland.
Every year, 12 million tonnes of Russian crude oil are processed here, into diesel, jet fuel and petrol - a tenth of the oil refined in Germany.
But this business also has a human story to tell, of the extraordinary jolting change that happened in the eastern part of Germany after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
'Its own world'
Twenty years ago, the then East German government owned PCK, which stands for Petrolchemisches Kombinat Schwedt.
It was, in the words of the current chief executive Klaus Niemann, "a state within a state".
Our aim is that our young people should stay in school here, find jobs and not go to other regions
PCK worker Roswitha Floter
The workforce numbered 9,000. Their children went to kindergartens run by the refinery.
There were 25 kitchens and canteens. The refinery owned a farm, and raised its own pigs.
It had its own laboratories and a research facility with 800 researchers. A lack of foreign exchange meant everything had to be made on site by engineering workshops, even screws.
PCK was the centre of life in Schwedt. It even had its own newspaper, staffed by six people.
One of them was Roswitha Floeter, who likes to brew up a pot of English tea in her comfortable office. She is small, wiry, and after 35 years with PCK, intensely loyal.
"I love this refinery," she confides, praising its "modern spirit" and high standards.
But she remembers the time of greatest change, after the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989. PCK was privatised in 1991; nowadays it is owned by several big oil companies.
The bloated inefficiencies of the Soviet era were ironed out, with a series of savage job cuts.
"Oh, it was a terrible time," she muses, "not good for the soul".
She was relieved to be told she would be kept on in a new public relations job. Others were less lucky.
The numbers employed dropped like a stone, from 9,000 in 1989 to 1,200 today.
Dr Niemann estimates that of those who lost their jobs, one third managed to find employment in the surrounding area, but two thirds decided to move to west Germany.
Wages are about 10% lower in Schwedt than in the west, and unemployment rates are still much higher, at somewhere between 20 and 25%.
In small villages, Dr Niemann says half the population may be living on state benefits.
Staff shortages
Asked how well the refinery business is doing, Dr Niemann chuckles wryly. "It's been better," he admits, but points out that three million inhabitants of Berlin buy the refinery's petrol and diesel products, so business is "okay".
It seems this area of east Germany has not been as badly hit by recession as parts of south-western Germany which produce exports, especially in the motor industry.
The older generation of PCK workers, often Russian-speakers who trained in Azerbaijan or Ukraine, will be coming up for retirement soon.
The worst problem, according to Mr Niemann, is that it's hard to attract young engineers to such a rural area. And locals are still leaving for the bright lights of big cities in the west and beyond.
At the Carl Friedrich Gauss secondary school in Schwedt, there's little appetite for staying from a classful of students studying English.
A random sample of bright and bouncy 17 to 19-year-olds outline their plans excitedly; they include emigration to the UK, and university courses in computer science and Japanese.
Only one teenager wants to become a teacher and stay in Schwedt, to be with his family.
Do any of them want to work at the refinery? No hands go up.
One boy says he does not want to be told what to do at PCK.
A girl explains that many of her family have been employees, including both her parents and her grandmother.
"They tell me it's not good to work there," she says. "It's hard work and you can't earn enough money."
Back at PCK, there are still traces of the Communist past to be seen.
There is a collection of Soviet-era art in the office buildings, and a sculpture of a brawny muscled worker still stares out bravely beside a blue-painted shed.
Veteran employee Ms Floeter worries about the future of Schwedt.
"Our aim is," she says "that our young people should stay in school here, find jobs and not go to other regions."
She shakes her head and purses her lips. "We have so much to do."