Luxury Watchmaker
A. Lange & Soehne, the watchmaker established in 1845 in the village of Glashuette near the Czech border, was expropriated by the communists in 1945 and reestablished in December 1990 by Walter Lange, a direct descendant of the founder. Jerzy Schaper, Lange’s CEO, says watches made from gold and platinum -- which range in price from 13,000 euros to 390,000 euros -- are selling especially well in Asia. Georg Prince zur Lippe, another Saxon who returned after unification, bought back his aristocratic family’s manor house and vineyards in Meissen, Weingut Schloss Proschwitz, that had been seized by the communists. The wines are now served on Deutsche Lufthansa AG flights.
Despite its progress, the state did experience its own version of the financial crisis, when state-owned Landesbank Sachsen, now known as Sachsen Bank, became a casualty of the U.S. housing meltdown in 2007 and lost 641.6 million euros.
The Saxony Prime Minister at the time, Georg Milbradt, resigned in 2008 after the bank’s near failure, saying he wanted “to prevent further damage both to myself and to others.”
Far-Right
There are also concerns that aging and depopulation of rural areas could lead to worker shortages, and automobile thefts have skyrocketed. Dresden has also been the scene of the largest neo-Nazi marches in Germany since the 1960s. Eight members of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany won seats in the 2009 election to the state’s 132-member assembly.
Despite these challenges, though, Saxony is a success story, especially when compared to where things stood in 1990. “The Saxons are really hardworking,” says Christian Schwinner- Strachwitz, 67, who returned to Saxony after reunification. “They never need a kick in the butt.”
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