ON a fine day last week, the towers and many chimneys of Schwerin's fairytale Stadtschloss looked spectacular reflected across the lake, framed by the bright reds, browns and yellows of trees turning gently with autumn. Once the home of the dukes of Mecklenburg, expropriated by the state in 1918, it is now the home of the parliament of the north German lander of Mecklenburg Western Pomerania.
It's still possible to see the old grandeur in the restored rooms at the back of the castle, now a scum. That, at least, they did well in the old East Germany.
But another legacy of the GDR weighs heavily on this beautiful state of a thousand lakes, the Cavan of the Baltic. With an average income of only 50 per cent of former West Germany, it may take 25 years for the lander's 1.9 million people to catch up, the prime minister, Dr Berndt Seite, admits.
A former vet who joined the democracy movement in the GDR, Dr Seite heads the local Christian Democrat led administration. He has an infectious enthusiasm which belies the scale of the problems he faces. The pot is always half full . .
He rejects the suggestion that the "Ossies" were simply taken over and swamped by Big Brother in West Germany. "We liberated ourselves, not Kohl," he says, recalling the 3,000 who demonstrated in the town square in the knowledge no one could come to their aid. "We certainly do not feel annexed."
Thirty per cent of the state which runs from the Polish border across a large part of Germany's Baltic coast is set aside as nature reserves. "But we cannot live by going, for walks and observing nature, Dr Seite says. They must live off small scale businesses, the crisis wracked shipyards of Rostock and tourism. But the tourists who come here to walk the lakes and forests, only two hours from Berlin, spend little locally.
In time, he hopes, the coastal resort of Usedom with its old fashioned hotels and fine beaches will again become the fashionable place it once was.
Dr Seite talks angrily of a visit within the last 10 days to Gaza, where he saw the checkpoints on the border with Israel with their guns and barbed wire - "15 killed only weeks ago on the border. They are as bad as the GDR days. And they live on an average income of 800 a year. This is poverty. My state is rich by comparison."
In part, that is why he is completely committed to the process of EU enlargement. The Polish workforce 100 km from his capital is prepared to accept wages of as little as one seventh of his constituents. That's not the point, he says. There is no alternative except facing up to that reality.
"My political credo is that the enlargement of the EU is primarily about making and preserving peace. Until now, it has been seen too much from a commercial point of view. There is too much of a bookkeeping mentality . . For the first time for centuries, we have the opportunity of overcoming the deep divisions between Germany and Poland. It is a splendid opportunity that must be grasped."
He speaks movingly of his memories as a child in 1945, fleeing as a refugee from Silesia, of a cart sliding through the snow towards the edge of a lake, and of how the images of Bosnian refugees bring it all back. "It must never happen again. The price of enlargement is not too low or too high, this is simply a task that must be accomplished.
The refreshing internationalism of the east Germans, their instinctive rejection of a fortress Europe, is a surprise but then, perhaps not, given their own recent memories of life under Stalinism.
Dr Seite's most immediate problem is finding several hundred million pounds in the budget to restore the viability of the state's shipyards following the collapse of the huge Bremer Vulkan group. This and so much more has to be done just as the federal Government begins to claw back its subsidies.
Much of the budget is tied up with the construction industry which now represents over a fifth of the lander's GDP, reflecting the breakneck modernisation process under way all around the "new lander". And he acknowledges gratefully the not insignificant EU contribution two thirds of a billion pounds in the 1994-99 period.
Agriculturally, Mecklenberg Western Pomerania has opportunities not shared by other parts of Germany. Average holdings by co operatives of 500 acres are far more in tune with the reforms of the Common Agriculture Policy than the average 30 acre farm in the rest of the country. Dr Seite believes that with investment, the lander can become the breadbasket of Berlin and Hamburg.
The two cities are to be joined by 2005 by an ultramodern magnetic levitation based train capable of travelling the 400 km in less than an hour. Schwerin will be its only stopping off point, reducing the journey to Berlin to, 32 minutes.
Dr Seite's confidence is tempered, however, by an acknowledgment that up to a quarter of his constituents may not adapt to the requirements of life under capitalism. It is a proportion which corresponds, he admits, to the vote of the reformed former Communist Party, then the SED, now the PDS.
He cautions against intolerance of those whom he sees as victims of a failed social experiment. "In a way it is almost a biological problem you can't change people who in their youth had pinned their hopes to a new form of society...
"Now we have to deal with a population of `used people'. We cannot unscrew them like a light bulb and change it for a new one shining just as brightly."
