He absolutely wants to show the visitor that.

It's important to him because it explains why he's here.

So on this bright summer evening Matthias Hey leads up the steep vineyard to the point with the best view.

On the right is the view of the Pforta Monastery, founded by the Cistercians in 1132 and a famous state school since the Reformation, which Hey also attended.

On the left you can see the Naumburg Cathedral, built in the 13th century and on the UNESCO World Heritage List for a few years.

And the vineyard on which we stand is also at least half a millennium old.

Ralph Bollmann

Correspondent for economic policy and deputy head of economics and “Money & More” for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Berlin.

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    Perhaps you have to come here and visit this young winemaker to understand what kind of country it is that elects a new state parliament on Sunday.

    Or, what it is not, because it is not possible to draw an arc between the bitter Hanseatic cities of the north and the lovely south here, which locals and tourists optionally compare with Tuscany or the Dordogne, because of all the vineyards and castles that Limestone cliffs and the silvery shimmering Saale down in the valley.

    No other federal state has so many world cultural heritage sites in relation to its size.

    Whether it is the Bauhaus in Dessau or the Garden Realm in neighboring Wörlitz, the old town of Quedlinburg, the Naumburg Cathedral or the Lutherstadt Wittenberg.

    And yet surveys regularly show that at least non-residents associate little with the hyphenated word “Saxony-Anhalt”;

    many cannot even name a city that is in the state.

    You go “to the Harz” or buy wine that says “Saale-Unstrut”.

    The latter is hardly any different for the locals.

    Economically weak like no other country

    "Sachsen-Anhalter" always sounds a bit like hitchhiking that has gone out of fashion, but strictly speaking, "Anhaltiner" are only those who come from the former Anhalt principalities - that is, the area around Dessau and Köthen, Bernburg and Zerbst. The rest of the country belonged partly to the Saxon electors until 1815 and partly to the Hohenzollern family for a long time. When the Prussians swallowed everything except Anhalt in 1815, they combined the thrown together areas into an ahistorical "Province of Saxony" with the capital Magdeburg.

    In addition, Saxony-Anhalt, with a gross domestic product of less than 29,000 euros per capita, is economically as weak as no other country;

    the national average is a good 41,000 euros.

    In the three decades since reunification, economic output rose by 212 percent, but that too is the lowest value among the eastern federal states;

    Brandenburg brings it to just under 280 percent.

    Politically, things-Anhalt is considered difficult terrain, the AfD is strong in many places.

    What country is this?

    Perhaps an inquiry in Naumburg, Dessau and Magdeburg can help - with a winemaker, a cultural manager and a politician who want to make a difference.

    In the distance he recognized what home means

    Matthias Hey could have stayed away, as many have done in the decades since the fall of the Wall. The 38-year-old studied viticulture in Geisenheim, in the Rheingau, and then worked for two years in Italy, in Friuli. But it was the vineyard that his parents had bought as a place to relax that brought him to his field of study, otherwise he might have enrolled in medicine, possibly also in literature or philosophy.