The previous managing director of the Wiesbaden youth workshop (WJW) and thus head of the Mechtildshausen domain, Werner Backes, has to go.

His contract expires on March 1st and, despite appeals from employees to continue working, will not be extended.

Backes returns to the Wiesbaden city administration, from which he came three years ago.

Apparently, a position for the former head of the Economics and Employment Department in the Office for Economics and Real Estate has yet to be found.

The behind-the-scenes political dispute over Backes' contract extension was an expression of a long-simmering dispute over the future direction of the domain.

Oliver Bock

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung for the Rheingau-Taunus district and for Wiesbaden.

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While Backes and the head of the WJW supervisory board, Christoph Manjura (SPD), head of the social affairs department, have long been pursuing the line of reducing the deficit domain to its role as a training center for disadvantaged young people, the Greens saw and see the state-owned 185 hectares under their parliamentary group leader Christiane Hinninger large organic farm a beacon of organic farming.

The citizens of Wiesbaden look with great interest at the domain, which is a popular destination and a place to buy agricultural products.

Annual deficit of two million euros

It has been clear for a good two years that there must be changes there.

Only a few of the 400 trainees at the youth workshop are interested in an agricultural profession.

In the past, keeping up to 650 cattle, around 800 pigs, several thousand chickens, horses and goats led to an annual deficit of around two million euros.

Manjura also referred to the Hessian municipal code, according to which the city may not operate economically if the “purpose is not or cannot be fulfilled equally well and economically by a private third party”.

The livestock should therefore be reduced to subsistence, which the Greens did not agree with.

In addition, according to Manjura's concept, it was planned to develop the domain into a WJW campus and thus into its sole location.

The Gassenbacher Hof in Idstein and the Hofgut Klarenthal had been given up under the aegis of Backes and with the support of Manjura.

Almost four million euros that had been approved for the refurbishment of the Klarenthal estate were to be diverted, at least in part, to Mechtildshausen in order to refurbish the market hall there and sharpen the profile as a "direct marketer, place of adventure and world of pleasure".

The WJW training workshops on Hasengartenstrasse in Wiesbaden are also up for grabs because investments would be necessary there and because the neighboring company Vitronic wants to expand its location.

The city does not want to stand in the way of this, because Vitronic is an important employer and trade tax payer.

However, building a new workshop on the domain would be time-consuming.