Amerikan Way of Life Nearing Extinction
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AMERIKA, Germany — Cheer up, America. In Amerika, things are really tough.
In this tiny village in the former East Germany, every worker is unemployed and every family afraid of losing its home. With the closing of the Spinnerei Amerika textile mill, the community’s economic lifeline since 1849, the Amerikan way of life is in danger.
The village got its name 150 years ago when new mill employees, trudging through dense forest and crossing a wide river, kept asking, “What are we doing, discovering America?” The Germanized name stuck.
The mill thrived, employing 1,300 people by 1932. But the arrival in the 1980s of German unification, the free market and a flood of cheap, imported sweaters, trousers and shirts have hammered the textile industry in the former East Germany.
On Jan. 1, Spinnerei Amerika closed, idling 260 people--including everyone in Amerika.
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