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The 16,000-square meter settlement had a fuel factory when it was part
of communist East Germany. But the village started decaying after the
collapse of the Berlin Wall.
The small village of Alwine in the eastern German state of Brandenburg
was sold on Saturday at an auction house in Berlin for €140,000
($165,000).
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The Karhausen auction house had set the minimum bid for the
16,000-square meter village a two-hour drive south of Berlin at
€125,000.
"Many interested parties inquired with us, including from abroad," said
Matthias Knake, a Karhausen spokesperson. The anonymous winner was the
auction's sole bidder.
Alwine's road and nine partially dilapidated residential buildings, home
to around 15 people, were part of the sale.
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"The winner wants to do something good with this purchase — for the
welfare of the people who live there," Knake said.
Relic of the GDR
The property of Alwine was owned by Europe's oldest fuel briquette
factory when Brandenburg was part of communist East Germany. Around 50
people lived in the village, which is in the middle of a forest near the
town of Uebigau-Wahrenbrück.
But the factory closed after German reunification in 1990. Many Alwine
residents, most of them young people, began to leave the village in the
following years.
Two brothers bought the land in 2001 for a "symbolic deutschmark,"
Germany's former currency.
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Yet they were unable to save Alwine, which has no shop and no public
transport connections, from decay and was put up for sale after one of
the brothers died.
Uebigau-Wahrenbrück's mayor, Andreas Claus, told local news portal rbb24
that the brothers did not do enough to improve the village: "Practically
nothing has happened here since their purchase. The rent was cashed, but
very little was done to change peoples' lives." |