GOERLITZ, Germany - Fifteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the lovingly restored houses, squares and churches in this medieval town look like monuments to success in Germany's massive effort to revive its once-communist east.

But at night a different picture emerges in the dark windows and empty streets: Half the apartments in the city center stand empty behind their elegant baroque and art deco facades.

Cultural treasures boost pride but can't cover up the town's dramatic loss of people and jobs. High unemployment remains the worst symptom of an unsolved economic mess that continues to drain the life out of what used to be East Germany.

It was more than enough to dampen any festive mood Tuesday, the anniversary of East Germany's Nov. 9, 1989, decision to open the Berlin Wall in the face of huge pro-democracy demonstrations. East and West Germany merged 11 months later, ending their 40-year Cold War divide.

The East's stagnation, a legacy of a failed investment spree and high taxes and regulation imported from West Germany, has made a mockery of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl's 1990 promise of "flowering landscapes" in an east freed of communist rule.

Reunification began with euphoria, and the wealthy west began pumping what would eventually amount to $1.5 trillion into the east, expecting that the poorer cousins would soon catch up. The money built new highways, train stations, telephone networks and shopping malls, and rescued historical treasures like Goerlitz's downtown, which had crumbled under communism.

But new buildings didn't equal jobs: Every fifth easterner remains out of work, roughly twice the national average.

Add growing pressure on jobs also in the west, where unemployment is over 10 percent, and easterners can expect even less sympathy from their richer brethren this year.

"The relationship is still tense and difficult, and it doesn't appear to be getting easier," Mayor Rolf Karbaum said in his office at Goerlitz's 16th-century town hall.

As part of Germany's sturdy post-World War II democracy, the people of the former communist bloc today can say, do as they please and are free to travel the world. But such liberties tend to pale against the everyday grind of low-wage jobs - or no jobs at all.

Life in united Germany "has become more realistic and rougher," said the mayor.

That's certainly true for Goerlitz, 120 miles southeast of Berlin on Germany's easternmost border. Its troubles since 1990 are mirrored across much of the east. The city's outmoded smokestack industries collapsed in the breakneck switch to capitalism, wiping out 10,000 jobs in a population of 72,000.

That population shrank by nearly a quarter as the educated, young and talented headed west to find work, leaving behind the elderly and unskilled. Unemployment has hovered around 25 percent for years.

"The young people don't come back once they have some job training in the west," Karbaum said. "They stay where they have their new environment, their newly founded families."

Overall, the east has lost more than 800,000 of its 17 million people. Business groups in Saxony state, where Goerlitz is located, launched a job-offer Web site wistfully called www.sachsekommzurueck.de - "Saxon, come back."

But it's a tough sell. Sven Hanke, 16, plans to finish high school, then move west to study electrical engineering.

"There's almost nothing going on here anymore," he said. "Every job, you get 100 people fighting for it. My parents say: If you've got to go, you've got to go."

Germany's western-dominated political establishment remains officially pledged to equalize living standards. But President Horst Koehler recently suggested that the east shouldn't expect that anytime soon. And he raised a second, uncomfortable point: Not all the east's problems are legacies of communism.

West Germany's welfare state - social programs, labor rules and high taxes and wages - was imposed wholesale on business in the east, helping smother growth just when it was needed the most.

"The West German system of rules was too full of complacency, an excessive entitlement mentality and a zeal to regulate that permeated everything," Koehler said.

Even so, easterners remain willing to work longer hours for less pay than their western colleagues. It's a small advantage in keeping jobs, and there's little interest in labor union calls to level the playing field.

Meanwhile, the next front in the competition for jobs has opened, just across the Neisse river in the town of Zgorzelec in Poland, one of the former Soviet bloc nations that joined the European Union on May 1.

Germans trek to Zgorzelec for cheaper haircuts, food and gasoline. Already, the region's prized blue polka-dot pottery is made in low-wage Poland.

Karbaum fears the German side won't be able to keep up.

If an investor comes sniffing around Goerlitz, "he'll also be ready to make that little hop across the river," Karbaum worried. "Over there, you have a whole other set of conditions - dream conditions."