German FAZ: A city says goodbye to VW prosperity007740

Without Volkswagen, Baunatal would not exist. When the automobile manufacturer’s factory was located in Altenbauna, just outside Kassel, 50 years ago, seven small towns merged to form one city. Thanks to the automobile company’s high trade tax payments, an infrastructure was created in the decades that followed that many other municipalities with fewer than 30,000 inhabitants would be jealous of: two swimming pools, one of which is a large aqua park, and every district has a sports park. For a while, attending daycare was free. The money was there. The city was able to build up larger reserves.
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