Industry and crafts.

In Thuringia, where important roads intersected, commerce and the craft trades found favorable conditions for growth. Woad, a plant yielding blue coloring matter, brought the region early prosperity. A tradition of weapons craftsmanship led Suhl to become the “armorer’s workshop” for hunting and sporting guns. The industrialization of Germany in the 19th century began in Saxony and Thuringia; important branches were mining (potash), porcelain, glass, toys, and above all machine tools and the optical industry associated with the names Zeiss and Schott in Jena.

Thuringia has once again picked up the thread of these old traditions. In the wake of the wrenching economic changes brought on by the fall of the Wall and the end of the GDR, new structures in line with market conditions have been developed which make it possible to attract future-oriented technologies to the Free State of Thuringia. With three universities, a number of Fachhochschulen, roughly 50 research institutions and 20 technology centers, Thuringia now has a strong academic and scientific base. Jena continues to be the heart of the optical industry. Machinery is manufactured above all in Gera and Erfurt. The state capital is also a center for microelectronics. In Eisenach the traditional automobile industry with its suppliers predominates; the new Opel plant there has the highest productivity of any automobile plant in Europe Other major industries in Thuringia are the electronics, glass fine ceramics wood processing textile, clothing and Chemical industries.

half of thuringia’s area is given over to farming; some of its farmland has soil of the highest quality. Im portant crop are grain, rape potatoes and sugar beets. since time immmemorial, thuringia has also enjoyed un excellent reputation for the processing of agricul-tural products into ffoods for human consumption