Bitterfeld

Bitterfeld went from Germany's dirtiest sky to sailing weather. The name once stood for the chemical industry at its most unsparing: the GDR's combines around Bitterfeld and Wolfen — dyes, film, aluminium — made the district a synonym for ecological catastrophe, "Europe's filthiest town" in the last socialist winters. Three decades on, the reversal is almost theatrical: the abandoned lignite pit at the town's edge was flooded into the Goitzsche, a vast lake district with marinas, beaches and the Pegelturm's spiral lookout rising from the water — Bitterfelders sail where their parents' laundry greyed on the line.

History left rarities among the chimneys. In Wolfen's film factory — now an industry and film museum preserving the halls — Agfa researchers achieved a world first in 1936: the modern multi-layer colour film, ancestor of every colour photograph, invented here before the works' postwar life as ORWO. And literature borrowed the town's name for a doctrine: the "Bitterfelder Weg" of 1959, proclaimed at the combine's culture palace, ordered GDR writers to the workbench and workers to the pen — a chapter of German literary history taught wherever the East is studied.

Today's Bitterfeld-Wolfen hosts a modern chemical and solar park on the old sites, its town quarters plain and improving, the lake its uncontested pride. Colour film, commanded literature, and water where the pit was: few towns have developed more completely.