Algolsheim is an Alsatian farmers’ village. When you drive along the speed-bumped main street and see the small manicured farmhouses, you suspect that the village community is intact here. The housing development is at the edge of the Algolsheim town limits. The cars parked in front of the homes have license plates from Freiburg or Karlsruhe. “Einfamilienhaus zu verkaufen” [“Single-family home for sale”] is written only in German on a “for sale” sign. “It’s those villages that grew rapidly. Whether the owners are German or French doesn’t really matter. More significant is the classic conflict between villagers and newcomers who want the comforts of a big city,” says Thierry Uhrin of “Sivom du Pay de Brisach,” the local association of communes. By now real estate prices are starting to converge, he says, the relocation boom from Germany is over.
The Alsatian town of Algolsheim and the German town of Breisach are about five kilometers apart. More than eighty percent of the small city was destroyed in the Second World War. In the 1950s, it became a pioneer in efforts to improve German-French relations. Oliver Rein, the newly elected mayor, says that even back then 97 percent of Breisach residents voted for a united Europe. “We see ourselves as an integrated region; that makes our area unique.” He goes on to say that the introduction of the Euro made economic integration even more intense and that numerous Inter Regional (InterReg) projects supported by the EU have been undertaken with Neuf Brisach. There are about six hundred of these projects on the Upper Rhine. Their efforts aim at cross-border cooperation, for instance, through the founding of tri-national courses of study or through cooperation between German and French hospitals. “Germany and France have grown a lot closer here, especially in the past few years. Soon we will be signing the “Eurodistrict” Treaty. Sometimes it’s a problem, however, that so few students are still interested in exchange programs with France. Nowadays it has to be at least New Zealand.”
Source: Rüdiger Soldt, “Käse aus Frankreich, Konserven aus Deutschland. Die Grenzgänger zwischen dem Elsaß und Baden gehören zur Normalität” [“Cheese from France, Canned Goods from Germany. Cross-Border Commuters between Alsace and Baden Are a Part of Normal Life”], Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 8, 2006, p. 4.
Translation: Allison Brown
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