Literature already knew it before the Berlin Institute for Population and Development, which is actually how it should be, since it is responsible for sensing moods and longings, including those of society as a whole.

Some of the most acclaimed books of recent times have moved from the city to the country.

Juli Zeh lets a young woman flee from Berlin to a Brandenburg village in “Über Menschen”, Judith Hermann lets a woman who is no longer so young go to a house near the coast in “Daheim”, and Sarah Kuttner sends a couple out in “Kurt”. the big city in the suburbs.

All of the protagonists fall into the 25 to 49 age group, which the Berlin Institute identified in a study published on Tuesday as the engine of a development that is now being documented for the first time with figures:

Petra Ahne

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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For the study, the Berlin Institute took a very close look at the surveys of the statistical offices of the federal and state governments on "migration" from the years 2008 to 2020.

The migration balance, i.e. the difference between newcomers and emigrants per thousand inhabitants, looked very different at the beginning of the study period than at the end: In the years 2008 to 2010 more than two out of three small towns and villages lost residents.

The smaller the town, the more pronounced the migration.

The big cities and towns in metropolitan areas, on the other hand, grew.

Cities only gain from immigration from abroad

In the years 2018 to 2020, the development was reversed on a large scale: almost two thirds of the rural communities gained residents.

Cities are still growing, but less so – and only because people who move to Germany from abroad often settle in cities.

Without them, many large cities would no longer have any "migration gains".

The growth in rural areas, in turn, affects all of Germany, including the east, where ten years ago nine out of ten rural communities shrank and only large cities such as Dresden, Leipzig or Potsdam recorded an influx.

In the meantime, the emigration from the eastern German federal states to the west has stopped;

for a few years there has been a fairly balanced movement back and forth in numbers, and the new influx into the countryside is also distributed evenly.

The trend was already gaining momentum in 2017, and the pandemic accelerated it again.

In the past, there have always been pendulum movements.

In the years of the economic boom, people wanted their own house if possible;

around the turn of the millennium, cities were booming.

Remote areas became continuously emptier.

That is different now, and there is much to suggest that a fundamental change is taking place.

Thanks to digitization, fiber optic connections and a changed corporate culture that includes mobile working, people can now move to places that are still too remote for commuting - even to villages that had almost ceased to be.

Many projects are still in the early stages

This is where things start to get exciting – because what matters is what the new arrivals mean for the rural communities.

It is mainly young people who are starting their careers and slightly older people with their children who are moving to the countryside, often away from the big city.

What expectations and hopes do they arrive with, how do they want to live in the new environment?

Would you like to be part of the village community?

Will the old village centers be revived, or will new single-family house settlements be built on the outskirts, which would increase the already far too high area consumption?

Has it simply become too expensive for people moving to the country in the city, or is it genuine “lust for the countryside”, a word that the study bears in the title?

How much romance is in it - and could it be disappointed?

Answers to questions like these will be provided by a follow-up study in the coming year, the Berlin Institute puts it off, and will deal with the people moving, their motivation and ideas in more detail.

In a study published last year, the Institute dealt with one group, the founders of digitally supported workplaces.

They move to the country with new ideas about work and life, set up co-working spaces in old barns or found a tiny house settlement.

Many projects are still in the early stages.

But they do suggest that in the future, town and country as opposites will no longer be as good as they used to be.