Structural change in Bonn has worked Taking stock 20 years after the government move to Berlin

Bonn · Bonn has liberated itself from its former function as the federal capital. Today, almost a fifth of all jobs in Bonn are concentrated in the government quarter.

When the Federal Parliament decided by a narrow majority on 20 June 1991 to move the parliament and parts of the government to Berlin, a feeling spread among Bonn’s retailers, the numerous small service providers with clients in the government district and the local real estate world that had remained a foreign word to these sectors for decades: fear of existence.

“We will not leave Bonn out in the cold,” is how the dictum of the parties in the Federal Parliament can be briefly summed up. And this tailwind literally carried Bonn into the future. The predicted demise did not take place, the lights along the Rhine remained on.

The investment by the federal government in Bonn after the decision to move was later estimated at one billion Euros. Six ministries retained their primary office on the Rhine, and Deutsche Post, Telekom and the United Nations joined them, moving into the former government buildings and around the former parliament.

Nearly a fifth of all jobs in Bonn

Around 1990, there were about 21,000 jobs in the government quarter, according to the city administration. Today there are more than 45,000, according to city information. This means that today almost a fifth of all jobs in Bonn are concentrated in Gronau, which was open land up until the war, interrupted by only a few solitary buildings such as the Pedagogical Academy, the town hall and the waterworks.

As for the waterworks, a new 17-storey building is currently going up between the prominent old building and its transparent new building: the former member of parliaments’ highrise, Langer Eugen, is gradually becoming too cramped for the UN Climate Secretariat, Bonn’s largest UN organisation.

WCCB, Telekom and DPDHL

The new build is part of a framework plan with which the city wants to gradually further develop the former “special area of capital city facilities.” Right next door, in the World Conference Centre Bonn (WCCB), the world negotiates.

The largest employers in the district, which has long since been renamed the “Government Quarter” are Telekom and Deutsche Post, whose Post Tower has towered over Bonn’s skyline for nearly two decades.

However, the employment market is far from being a monoculture: the spectrum ranges from the Caesar Research Centre and Deutsch Welle to the Johanniter Hospital, the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation and the Federal Armed Forces’ Cyber and Information Command.

There is no nostalgia for Bonn in Berlin’s political circles, said Wolfgang Schäuble recently in the context of this series of articles. According to the President of the Federal Parliament, many members of parliament have no personal memories of the time of the capital on the Rhine. And the personal memories are fading in Bonn too.

Emotions about the demolition of the Cäcilienhöhe or the poor state of the American Club are therefore kept within limits. And those who use the long established line “Here you could always watch how…” when taking their foreign guests on a private city tour are now increasingly met with indifferent faces. But Bonn hosts can be reassured. It is precisely this rapid development that is causing interest in Bonn, the city that used to be capital, to grow, especially among young audiences.

(Original text: Rüdiger Franz. Translation: kc)

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