Dismantling East (Swiss Stories 2011, by Marco Frauchiger) - Swiss Press Award

Der Bund

Marco Frauchiger

There was no one at the snack bar on Käthe-Kollwitz-Strasse. They then met Manfred Eichhorst at the Zeissig gun shop. Hoyerswerda? "Home," he said. Hoyerswerda, the largest city in northern Upper Lusatia, a major district seat in the Saxon district of Bautzen, became internationally known in 1991 for xenophobic riots – but above all, a city that is running out of people. Coal, energy, and construction: with the fall of the GDR, jobs also disappeared. Nowhere else in Germany is there a higher emigration rate – 29 percent since reunification. Add to that the declining birth rate and the aging population, and to date, Hoyerswerda has lost half of its then 70,000 residents. Many prefabricated buildings have emptied, as has the homeless shelter. Two Bernese photographers, Marco Frauchiger and Simon Tanner, traveled to Hoyerswerda to create a "visual psychogram" of this city. Her images give the demographic crisis a face. It's that of Birgit Lauer, who runs a bowling alley and says that hope dies last – "but here it dies." It's that of Mr. Rentsch, who is on welfare, has a dog, and a "home," just like the gun dealer. Or that of the teenager on Doktor-Wilhelm-Külz-Strasse: "This is a retirement town." She wants to leave, as soon as possible. According to a current forecast, Hoyerswerda will lose another 10,000 residents in the next 15 years. This work was created in March 2010 in Hoyerswerda, Saxony. Simon Tanner and Marco Frauchiger