The Europeanization of Strasbourg

Sprawled along the left bank of the Rhine River on the French-German frontier, the ancient city of Strasbourg (pop. 250,000), typifies the jarring blend of old and new that is Europe today. Thick-walled 17th century fortresses, built by the great French engineer Vauban, and a toweringly spired Gothic cathedral look down on postwar synthetic-rubber factories and petrochemical plants. Although 300 miles from the North Sea, Strasbourg is France's largest port for exports; Common Market-bred prosperity has all but erased old fears that the city might once again become the object of French-German rivalry. TIME Correspondent William Rademaekers recently visited Strasbourg and filed this report:

MADAME VICTOR STEINLE, the widow of an Alsatian wine-barrel maker, has changed nationalities five times in her long life. She was born French, but became German in 1870 when Bismarck's army marched across the Rhine and took possession of Alsace and Lorraine. She remained German until 1918, when the French returned to Strasbourg. In 1940 Hitler made her German again, and in 1944 she was back where she began, a citizen of the French Republic. "My only wish," she says, at the age of 108, "is not to change again. I want to die French."

Madame Steinle will undoubtedly have her wish--and if anything is certain in Europe's uncertain '70s, her children and grandchildren will live and die as Frenchmen too. To Strasbourgiers, that sense of security is something new, and even a bit miraculous. "For centuries," says Mayor Pierre Pflimlin, who in 1958 served for 18 days as the next-to-last Premier of France's Fourth Republic, "we in the border areas have known nothing but fear and insecurity. Now that nightmare has ended. The Common Market and the concept of Europe have made a basic and fundamental change in our lives."

How basic and how fundamental is immediately evident in the boomtown prosperity of Strasbourg, which has capitalized on its schizophrenic past in planning its European future. It not only exports most of its products --chiefly synthetic rubber and machine tools--but it also draws on the German Wirtschaftswunder for its own development. More than 26,000 Alsatians cross the Rhine daily to work in German and Swiss plants. Conversely, 10,000 Germans drive into Alsace every day, many to load up on cheaper French food.

Twenty years ago, Strasbourgers would have found it impossible to seek better-paying jobs in the neighboring German river towns of Kehl and Offenburg. Even vacation trips across the Rhine involved complicated visa forms and meticulous custom searches. The Common Market has changed all that. "A lot of young people in Europe take open borders for granted," said a French customs official at the 13-year-old Europe Bridge that connects Strasbourg and Kehl. "They seem to think it was always this way."

Roads. Once part of a backward, undeveloped pocket of northeastern France, Strasbourg today has the Continent at its doorstep. Some 230 trains pass through the town daily, and there are 5,000 miles of quality roads in the immediate area, including German autobahns and Swiss autoroutes that put Frankfurt and Basel only two hours away. (Ironically, it is easier for an Alsatian to travel out of France than to his own capital: Paris is 200 miles and a five-hour drive away, on a treacherous, obsolete two-lane highway.) The handsome new Entzheim Airport, with runways big enough to handle international jet traffic, has seven flights a day to Paris, as well as daily flights to London, Brussels and Milan.

The planes and trains, of course, are not only for business. Strasbourgers share the mania for seeing Europe first --even in winter. Many families are spending some of the gray days of February and March on tours. Four days in Rome are offered for $60, Athens for $100. Even for those who do not travel, Europe is in evidence. In Strasbourg's new suburban supermarkets, shoppers pick their way through oranges from Spain, smoked bacon from the Black Forest, mortadella from Bologna, gingersnaps from England and coffee-flavored hopjes from Holland.

Bilingualism is one of the few positive inheritances of Strasbourg's checkered past. Almost everyone speaks both German and French, as well as the local throat-curdling dialect. Strasbourg's stay-at-homes need only change a channel for a new language experience. They get the three German TV channels on their sets as well as the three French ones. With a bit of antenna fiddling they can also pick up Swiss and Luxembourg television, although it is hard to imagine why they would want to.

The local paper, Dernieres Nouvelles d'Alsace, now has a circulation of 220,000 in its French edition and 100,000 in an edition that is half-French and half-German. The balance of news in the bilingual edition is more German than French, and there are plenty of seductive German help-wanted ads in the paper. The German presence in Alsace, in fact, is stronger today than at any time since the Armistice. "They are buying back what they lost in two wars," complains a Paris-based salesman. "It's just a different form of occupation." Perhaps mindful of that possibility, French educational authorities have forbidden the teaching of German-language courses in Strasbourg primary schools.

Even in Europe-minded Strasbourg, there are limits to Europeanization. Although city planners discuss with their counterparts in Kehl such common development problems as new bridges and garbage-disposal plants, the overall city plan for the year 2000 is based purely on projected French developments. French national pride is hurt by the daily migration of Alsatian workers to better-paying jobs in German plants. Beyond that, the vast majority of Strasbourgers are either indifferent to, or ignorant of, the European Parliament that meets six times a year in their city. In their defense, it should be said that if they seem indifferent to the greater European dream--other than how it affects their daily lives--it is because the dream has not filtered down to them in an inspiring way.

In one sense, at least, Strasbourg remains locked in the past: it is still a military border town. The medieval tiles on city roofs are constantly rattled by the sonic booms from Mirage jet fighters based at Entzheim military airbase about ten miles east of the city. French officers still gather in the elegant mess off Place Broglie, whose entrance is emblazoned with the names of some 120 Strasbourg-born generals who fought for the glory of France, most often against the Germans across the river. But the threat of invasion, for the first time in two centuries, is not taken seriously. "None can predict the future," says Mayor Pflimlin, "but for the first time the people in this region, French and German, are building and planning their lives without considering a major war. A war between France and Germany now seems more remote than ever in modern European history. The Common Market began this process of reconciliation not only for us, but all of Western Europe . It is now up to us to carry it further. That is what we plan to do."

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