after the fall of the berlin wall nov 9th on d.w. . for over rich and home the fortune for the. books. the berlin wall came down 3 decades ago it happened suddenly for many people and triggered a lengthy process of social political and economic change parts of eastern germany is still trying to reinvent themselves and hold on to those young people who are

eager to move away upheaval when everything changes that's our focus today on mate we start in the eastern german city of the one thing that hasn't changed there is the construction of cars a tradition dating back to 9904 it's where the iconic truck was produced in the days of communist east germany. took over the company in 1900 modernised the plant now it's really engineering the business once more to make electric cars joining a revolution of a different type the green push towards immobility something good for the planet this time as opposed to the trouble he which is germans waited years to get their hands on and despite conjuring up feelings of nostalgia really did stick. this 2 stroke engine belongs to a church and it's a car you would have seen all of the east german roads 30 years ago and generic

mission set trickles it as a very practical vehicle when you could you could repair pretty much everything yourself from a v. belt senate commission coils to spark plugs you could access everything and fix it fast this was the 1st car i had as a student. these days you can find the so-called tragedies in a museum here in so cal common you factoring has a century long history. is employed by a company that to mum's flexibility he's used to that i must have had 10 different jobs he's always been happy to go where he's needed. i started in the paint shop and then i was working in sales and customer service i worked in assembly for a short time to i've been in a number of different locations including south africa that was a very interesting time on that side. but the biggest change is yet to come the

plantain sicko is being converted into an electric car factory. and from what they would hear here and speak out transformation means that every vokes wagon employee in saxony has to rescale and learn how to do other jobs every worker has to be retrained sometimes multiple times. but is that a good thing. other employees think it's good that we offer job security not just until today and tomorrow but also for the coming years one of. the jobs of being guaranteed despite the fact that electric vehicles are easy and to build that's because v.w. is increasing output it wants to produce some $333000.00 vehicles a year. the investment is good news for the city of which has seen a decline in both manufacturing and population since the fall of the wool.

the average age of the population in former east germany is very high young people are emigrating apart from the auto industry not many jobs of state and speak out we're glad the jobs we have here are secure with. but the situation is very different to supply as this plant south of charleston produces and a minion gearboxes for a range of comic but until now only for combustion engines. which is a sort of these days were a little concerned about how things are progressing in the car industry the fear is that what we're producing here will no longer be needed and it's always us it looks like the combustion engine is on its way out and they're trying to push electric engines through by hook or by crook they're not thinking about the losses.

at the morning meeting there's a sense of looming crisis the diesel emission scandal has led to a swift decline in orders and in the long term customers are likely to switch to electric mobility. so what then. the plant's post says demand for gearbox parts could continue for example in hybrid vehicles which run on both diesel and electric power he's hoping for a long transition period. you know i would feel hybrid cars will take over a large share of the market in the next 10 years it's an opportunity for us because the portion of aluminum in the casting that is in the vehicle itself is going to rise everyone is fighting for orders for the car makers have an advantage it's harder for the smaller casting works we think the market will consolidate in the next few years. the big fear here is that there could be job losses as there well

after the fall of the wool the car industry employs some 40000 people in saxony alone the mood is more upbeat at the largest employer here especially in the i.t. department which is looking for new recruits as technology advances so driving cars could become commonplace. michelle said his son is doing his training here. i will play a huge role in the future and my son can be part of it that makes me proud so cars have a bright future. along with environmental protection yes it moved through. despite not being a very environmentally friendly process production of electric vehicles as government subsidized its hope they'll improve at quality in cities still grappling with the fallout of the diesel emissions scandal v.w. has an ambitious target. we're at one percent at the moment. the

clear goal we've set for ourselves is 25 percent electric vehicles by 2025 at the latest if not earlier. series production has just begun up to 1550 id 3 models are to roll off the factory line here every day. up to 2000000 east germans pack their gear and headed west after the wall came down mostly women but how any of them made it into boardrooms of west german companies like. b.m.w. and is now on the board of. the journey. and found out in this exclusive interview she found it difficult leaving. the wall. at its. cross to visit my parents shore you can go right away.

it's a mass migration among those who left. for the border crossing on. what was it like to live in the. most people underestimate how different. 22. but we were happy. and then suddenly everything changed. almost everything. it also meant. shortly after the union of germany my husband lost his job and i flowed more than 50 applications to a lot of companies on. an east german council to say and it turned out that nothing had a long term perspective. you didn't know at the time which industries would so wife

and which companies would so why in east germany we had extremely high unemployment rates in some cities above 20 percent and. he of west germany. what was it like being in the struggling in a western company that well of course my accent at the beginning was an opportunity for colleagues to laugh about but. at the end of the day my my education in east germany was excellent i had nothing. well where i felt. i couldn't do. it was more the private life that was very difficult. for the east. you grew up with trouble you drove a poor and then suddenly you ended up with b.m.w.

that must have been a shock it took i guess 6 years before i had my 1st b.m.w. when i came to. my 1st car there was a course 10 years old when i boarded and that was already a for me i have another off. but i was always thrilled. even as a kid even as a kid i had more matchbox then. i have 2 older brothers so that there was no option so the male dominated car industry wasn't wasn't really a challenge for you. i wasn't afraid of it. i knew that. i have to speak the language of the other so i know more about the horse power than about the colors of the car so to say it was so fascinating to see that every car

on the production line is different not only by color but also by interior and. in east germany you had 3 weeks where the same time in the same color of of the same options was produced and then it was changed and you could also not choose which options were in the car that you got delivered so one thing that doesn't seem to have changed is that there are so few women working in your area and so if you women in leadership positions force one is working very hard on diversity and inclusion in the whole 1st one cool we do have a chief human resource officer at bentley and now just recently also i was hired so i 30 is a woman that was appointed so i'm not the only one anymore and i'm glad for that and i hope that this development continues. so would you say you've profited from a major crisis of a system twice now the fall of the wall and then he's ok. i think it's fair to say

that yes. i would probably not be in the position that i would now be followed to the zoo. i do think that. the changes in the system that the wall came down and. pushed my career and in 2 instances. and how are you dealing with these ok there's still a lot to do. when i joined the folks in germany in 2016 i i said to my colleagues it will take 8 to 10 years to clean up have you been able to benefit from the affair in his push towards immobility for example i mean it was quite late 1st one was also in the past in many instances often a fast follower but yes i think. awareness of climate change and gate where there are 2 factors that help us to is thanks and i was trying to

cheat towards immobility. so what's the future of mobility by 2040 we will have a lot of i don't know most cars driving around and what about women in leadership positions i hope that doesn't take till 2000 for the until we have reached. parity . in the workforce you think it's possible i think it's possible. van a told me east and west no longer play a role in her daily life but one survey shows more than heart of people in the former east say they feel like 2nd class citizens is a look at some of the developments since reunification. pattern. the fall of the berlin wall 30 years ago an extraordinary moment in time.

west germany and east germany kept apart for decades could finally come together again it was nothing short of a love story. but then the cleanup in the east began rundown factories the legacy of state owned industries many of them worthless or at best uncompetitive not like in the west. if the west was at 100 percent the east was well way below 100 percent. in 1900 economic output per capita in the east was 43 percent of the value in western germany by 2018 it had risen to 75 percent the gap in pay has also shrunk but only somewhat average annual wages in the east are still nearly $5000.00 euros lower than in the west it's not altogether surprising that 57 percent of people living in eastern germany say they feel like 2nd class citizens. but as we saw the east is

catching up. g.d.p. growth last year was 1.4 percent in the west and 1.6 percent in the east. wages grew over the same period 3 percent in the west and 3.6 percent in the east. eventually economic output in the east is set to catch up. but at the current rate it's likely to take quite a long time for. so it's still set to take a long time and it's already been the year is surprising then that many east germans have run out of patience and left to seek a better life in western germany the resulting brain drain and loss of young people is having a dramatic effect in some areas entire regions in the east are on the verge of dying out and that the fact that the population is aging in both parts of the

country the future does not look good so what's needed is a fresh influx of people communities in eastern germany a working hard to attract new residents like our reporter to do milan who wondered whether she could be one of those people can she be one of the. south from the. it's you i would you move. well i can tell you what kind of like you have here is that it depends what's important for you. move 100 kilometers away from berlin to a place that could use more people if they find it on google maps to vittie is an issue here the district of such who's 40 percent of its working age population in the next 15 years demographic change has made its mark. walk down the street and you'll see how many shops are closed that's due to old age

the confines successors to take over the shops the center will die out one day. when that needs to be countered by getting young people to come here or even better get the people who used to live here to return. noting represents the district and parliament is from the far right anti migrant alternative for germany party it's becoming more popular here in new comers might not be. the standard house to be that you cretinous to ensure a livelihood for its own young people when after reunification many young workers moved from east to west as the old economic order crumbled this conveyor bridge is a symbol of that time it was used in the late night coal mining that powered east germany. one could argue that this is a region that is still trying to find itself in the years after mining power. this bridge was shut down and soon after even if they cation many mines here closed and thousands lost their jobs now in germany plans to phase out coal completely but how

much coal mining shaped the region is easy for outsiders to think at. berlin where i live 125 kilometers in that direction apparently now that doesn't sound all that far but from up here certainly feels that way. back on the. ground i'm on my way to my next stop finster vida that 16000 strong population is stable people have recently stopped leaving but not many are coming. back. so finding an apartment promises to be easy here as in many places in former east germany many apartment blocks were torn down to reduce oversupply as the population shrank. until it is a 42 square meter apartment. meter is way above the rent is $223.00 euro as.

20 years ago we did a lot of refurbishing but the rants only rose to a moderate extent what we needed to have affordable housing and it wouldn't have made sense to have high rents only to be left with empty apartments who claimed a man had lost her last in one home that's half of what tenants pay on average in berlin there are plans to improve rail connections between the 2 cities so i could keep a foothold in boats. in the future you'll be able to get from the fence to the main station we just have the one to berlin main station in an hour and a half so i think that's a clear argument when you're considering whether to stay in berlin or move to the surrounding region that were all cool. and there are some who are from the region and who've decided to move back there is still

a rare breed but i do meet one of them. for a coffee. and you come with a certain level of experience from elsewhere in germany and you think it can work but then you come back to these outdated structures and you notice how antiquated it all is to realize how difficult it is to get a foothold again sometimes i feel like the wall is still up it's kind of hard. starting an organic cornflakes business had him facing stifling bureaucracy and a resistance to new ideas but he's not alone a network of young entrepreneurs active in the region meets regularly for mutual support or to practice pitching it's a space for those willing to write off their hometowns as places to work and in that. i admire their optimism and their

loyalty to a place many preferred to leave for good i'll be thinking about on my way back to berlin. so the train seem to run a lot less frequently i'm looking at about an hour until the next one comes so i got some time no it's. probably not enough to figure out whether i'd move here it turns out that learning where region is headed and whether you can go with it is a complicated journey and not one to make just once well while his show is all about transformation we've been talking about pulling down walls not putting them up fact is much of the globe is in the grip of protectionism and nationalism right now that includes britain and brags that as a result bankers have been leaving for other european capitals companies have been shifting their u.k. offices to the e.u. to keep business running smoothly but not everyone's heading in the one direction we need some doctors brushing up on their english skills ready to apply for work in

britain for them the ongoing break that saga is not at the turret. canis reverse edge of area is a venezuelan who used to live in spain and run a sleep disorder clinic but he's now living in leicester england where he's about to start a new life as a general practitioner or g.p. . i was going. on. my future i'm not really the model. for many. professional development and i am getting in here in england would use remove from from one around before in the brain or when the hold up of them and the prospect of breaks it doesn't scare him his initial contract is for 3 years now he wants to bring his family over as soon as possible before heading to leicester he did an english course. in the polish capital warsaw the students are all doctors

intending to work in the u.k. among them is kareena but janu from romania. the course financed by the u.k.'s national health service the n.h.s. is designed for g.p.'s they rehearsed conversations with patients from practice balancing empathy and efficiency under time pressure. the doctors can expect to see quite a few patients every day. kareena but she is very aware of the dramatic changes the u.k. is facing. now scared a little bit concerned about the new to. a little bit about the bracks it also but i assume that also the britons are a bit concerned about the situation. but for now she's concentrating on passing her

english exams here in poland she's been studying 10 hours a day for 3 months now. how soon she and her daughter be off to england she's heard how expensive rents are in much of the u.k. and knows that will be her 1st challenge. well for her for the beginning i hope that i will find a place to settle. rent. affordable prices. carlos reversed achiever here has already found a home in leicester he's settling in and says he feels good there be n.h.s. health services paid for him to take driving lessons. while driving on the other side of a roll. why even for an. hour. driving for. several. hours have to go in the other.

the way the health system works in britain is also new to here. he's going to be working under supervision for the 1st 10 months then there will be another language test after that he can apply for a license to practice medicine in the u.k. then he can treat patients independently or. are always on the supervision and also always bitching all the people. are for what i have been doing all my life and what i am going to do the rest of my life what i write. carlos reavis edge of idea is in his early fifty's and back in training but he doesn't mind despite being up even in his life he's happy to have found challenging new work in his profession.

perhaps up evil is a fact of life even if it's not always as dramatic as the fall of the berlin wall change can be challenging but it really always offers new opportunities that's it for made join us again next and been physical one thanks for your company.

to. ah. dear friends dear antone and there's a scene in the when your mother was born in 1969 the wall was already 8 years old my grandchildren were born after the wall fell born in a. 3 generations one family on a journey through recent german history. all our family to

us 15 d.w. . there was isn't calculable. there it goes inside. their rivalry to play. 3 princes. who dream of the arab world. their hunger for power and boundless ambition has cost the middle east into a grave crisis such as. the rival princes of the gulf starts nov 27th on d. w. . he wanted to smash the berlin wall long before it finally

fell. a lazy off issues and stated you know linda byrd is actually better known as read legend of german rock music. let's find a mall is amazing my list of those. costs 21. this week on t.w. . earth home to millions of species a home worth saving. those are big changes and most start with small steps global ideas tell stories of creative people and innovative projects around the world like to use the term the climate used to green energy solutions and reforestation. they create interactive content teaching the next generation about environmental protection and more determined to build something here for the next

generation global ideas the multimedia environment series on d.w. . this is d.w. news live from berlin the nation commemorates the upheaval that changed the world order germany is marking 30 years since the fall of the berlin wall a week of celebrations is underway here in the capital we'll take you to the church where prayers and plans for a peaceful revolution shared the same space also coming up

a key witness in the impeachment inquiry against donald trump revises his testimony u.s. ambassador to europe gordon song london confirms.