Leipzig

Mayor Burkhard Jung on population figures, job development, economy, tourism and Leipzig airport.

Cities in the western part of Germany may be more modern and bigger than those in the east. But Leipzig, the second largest city in the east next to the capital Berlin, has been proud of retaining the traditional German culture and treasuring the country's history. Now, the city has been fiercely competing with the western cities to emerge as an economic power. I got an opportunity to interview Leipzig city Mayor Burkhard Jung on these and other issues concerning the city at the end of my one month stay. The friendly Mayor spoke about the challenges and his plans to overcome them during a half-hour interview. He also offered me the privilege to pose for a photograph with him on the balcony of the city hall, which is normally reserved for visiting statesmen.

Raghunandan: I was impressed with the way monuments and heritage buildings have been restored and maintained here. How did you manage to do it?

Burkhard Jung: We have about 15,000 monuments in Leipzig. We are very proud about it. It is a treasure of history. Most of them are maintained by private individuals and firms and we have framed strict rules to ensure that they are properly maintained. The city government is in charge of many of the important monuments. We invested about 6 billion Euros to restore them in 1990s.

Leipzig with its treasure of great history has been attracting tourists in large numbers from across the globe. But in many of the museums, information is available only in German. Don't you think it is a drawback for the city's growth?

Burkhard Jung: Yes, we do need to catch up. It is important for us to make more information available in English and other languages. Even menus in some restaurants are only in German. I am happy to say that things have changed immensely over the last few years. But we have much to do about it and appropriate steps will be taken to make it more convenient to people from outside, especially tourists.

Being an important tourist destination, don't you think Leipzig should have an international airport?

Burkhard Jung: Yes, there is demand for that. It also depends on passenger traffic numbers. I am hoping for a little breakthrough to happen in November. We will then have direct flights to London, Paris, Vienna and Rome from Leipzig. I hope that more places will be added.

Leipzig is called a shrinking city. What are you plans to overcome this problem?

Burkhard Jung: No, the city had the problem long ago. Now it is growing. Population is on the increase. Birth rate and death rates are almost equal now. People from other smaller towns are coming to Leipzig in search of opportunities. We are creating more and more employment opportunities. We are no longer shrinking. We expect that the city's population will increase to 550,000 by 2025. I know it is minor growth compared with cities in India.

What are your plans to generate employment opportunities so that you can stop educated youth from migrating to bigger cities in the west?

Burkhard Jung: We have identified five key cluster and innovation sectors -- automobiles biotechnology, logistics, energy and healthcare -- as potential growth areas that can generate jobs. And we are aggressively wooing investments in these sectors. We have already achieved much success and we hope to bring down the unemployment rate from the present 11 per cent to below 10 per cent by 2012. My aim is to make Leipzig self-reliant and place industry on par with western cities by 2019.

Would you like to project Leipzig to the world as tourist city or a destination for trade and commerce?

Burkhard Jung: Both. We established ourselves as a tourist cultural destination long ago. We are now concentrating on making it a city of commerce and trade. A vibrant and growing economy is necessary for the healthy growth of the city. I am proud to say that we have succeeded in bringing down the unemployment rate from 20 per cent to 11 per cent in the last five years.