20 Percent Berlin

🧠 Maurice’s 20% Berlin News Quiz is back next Wednesday!

#42: Merz resigning? Elif or Evers? F*ck Lufthansa

Andrew Bulkeley — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 17:02:12 GMT

We spend some time this week talking about how Merz may either attempt a minority government or just flat-out resign. Maurice thinks we’ll be getting a left-left-green government this Sunday and we again talk about whether or not Germany should socialize/expatriate apartments.

And a huge shoutout to our sponsor this week: Democrats Abroad!

🚲🗼#527: SPD corruption, short-term rentals, tram wedding

Andrew Bulkeley — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 10:16:42 GMT

How do you say ‘Landwehrkanal’ in French? Some canal I stumbled onto in Paris.

Hey 20 Percent,

Be careful what you wish for.

I’m writing this in Paris, where former mayor Anne Hidalgo built 1,500 kilometers of bike paths and ushered in a revolution in two-wheeled transport.

But Hidalgo also ushered in a level of cycling chaos that would send Germans to the hospital. Bicycle lights aren’t seen as mere suggestions here, they’re not even acknowledged. Cyclists speed through intersections when and however they see fit.

As a pedestrian, you’re on your own and you never know where the next Drahtesel (wire mule or bike) will come from.

Also, most of the cycling traffic seems to be rental e-bikes with the occasional parent bike taxi and e-scooter thrown in. They’re all zooming along at electricity-assisted speeds Berlin’s cargo bikes couldn’t even dream about. To be fair, I’m in the Arondissements in the middle, so I have no idea what’s going on out of sight of the Seine, but I can’t imagine it’s much different.

I love a cycling future, I just didn’t realize the level of anarchy attached to it.

Still, we did see one cyclist stopped at a traffic light last night coming back from dinner — it was green.

“He’s waiting for it to turn red so he can go,” my (German) wife said.

Maybe ride a bike this weekend?

Andrew

Krach (SPD) chaos

The center-left SPD in Berlin is experiencing its own form of chaos after Hannover prosecutors searched the home of the party’s Berlin mayoral candidate Steffen Krach less than two weeks before the September 20 election. Prosecutors are accusing him of corruption for providing secret documents to an allegedly friendly company bidding for a vacant piece of government property, according to RBB24. Krach himself said a donation made by the company to the Berlin SPD was immediately returned and denied any wrongdoing in the tender, which the allied company lost. The chaos will have little effect on the election — the SPD hovers at fifth place in polls, meaning Krach has no chance of becoming mayor.

Furnished, temporary rentals can be banned, sort of

And now there’s a tiny bit less rental-chaos after a Berlin court ruled that districts can prohibit temporary, furnished rentals, a loophole that allows landlords to charge higher rents. But districts can only reject the rentals in Milieuschutzgebiete, according to T-Online. Milieuschutzgebiete are designated areas in each district where renters enjoy extra protection to maintain a neighborhood’s social fabric and support lower income households. A Neukölln landlord sued after the district had forbidden her from renting out 15 furnished apartments temporarily at between €23.26 and €32.63 per sqm — the allowed rent for an unfurnished abode in the area is €10.37 per sqm. The landlord lost, giving officials yet another tool to fight greedy, greedy landlords.

Tie the knot in a tram

We’ve all at least once wished the BVG would do a little less marketing and a little more to combat its own chaos but this publicity-ploy is kind of funny — Berlin’s public transport provider is looking for three couples to get fake married in a tram Oct. 11. You can apply here (German only) and they make it clear that the marriage won’t be legally binding but will be used for marketing. And you can bring guests! I applied, because why not?

🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺

👨‍🦲 Merz takes aim at AfD, Trump

⚓ Germany’s connection to 9/11

🪖 Tusk warns of Russian incursions into NATO states

Factoid

They used to sell eggs in egg alley, which is why it’s called egg alley. Photo: Felipe Tofani via Creative Commons

Depending upon who you ask, Berlin’s shortest street is either the unimaginatively named Straße 54 in Heinersdorf or the Eiergasse in Mitte. Straße 54 weighs in at 17.2 meters, according to Tagesspiegel (paywall), and is sandwiched between a Tedi discount store and the Freies Land garden allotment colony. The adorable Eiergasse in the Nikolaiviertel has been heralded as the shortest at 16 meters for years, but some sources say it’s actually 18.

🔗 🔗 🔗 Useful links 🔗 🔗 🔗

🦋 20 Percent on Bluesky 🐘20 Percent on Mastadon 🧵 20 Percent on Threads 🎙️The 20% Berlin Podcast on Spotify 🎙️The 20% Berlin Podcast on Apple Podcasts

🧠 The 20% Berlin News Quiz — my pub quiz based on the content of this newsletter — is back on Wednesday, September 16th. Save the date. Grab your tickets now. I’d love to see you there.

#526: Anti-AfD protest, CSD memorial attacked, hackers publish data

Maurice Frank — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 10:30:31 GMT

Next Saturday it’s time for the Festival of Giant Kites at Tempelhof

Hey 20 Percent,

The dust has yet to settle after Sunday’s election in Saxony-Anhalt. It looks like the BSW, the small populist party founded by former left-winger Sahra Wagenknecht, could enable the first AfD-led state government. The mind boggles.

Forever-grinning AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund, who spent the election campaign puttering around from village to village on his East German motorscooter, has achieved cult status in the state. Behind his perfume-salesman cheer are some seriously hard-right policies: Separate classrooms for refugee kids. Deportation-maxxing. A ban on rainbow flags at schools. Defunding institutions that promote “anti-German” art, whatever that is. Life for refugees, immigrants, queer people, artists and many others who don’t fit in with the the far-right idea of Germany could soon feel uncomfortable if not less safe in Saxony-Anhalt.

The fact that 44% voted for the AfD is alarming enough. Equally worrying is the bottomless well of anger this movement has tapped into. This is a moment when non-fascist German leaders need to engage in some soul-searching and ask themselves “What went wrong?” — and what can be done differently.

How much will of this anger is there nationwide? The next elections, in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on September 20, will offer some indication.

🚨Thursday is Bundesweiter Warntag (warning day). Don’t worry if your phone starts buzzing and flashing at 11am — that’s just Germany testing its emergency alert systems.

News below.

Maurice

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Anti-AfD protest

Following the Saxony-Anhalt result on Sunday, thousands of Berliners congregated at the Brandenburg Gate to protest against the rise of the AfD. Organisers said about 15,000 showed up for the peaceful demo. The local lead candidates for the Greens and Die Linke spoke before the crowd. Meanwhile, CDU mayoral cadidate Stefan Evers rejected in an interview any collaboration with the AfD in Berlin. Evers said “Berlin stands for openness to the world, internationalism and solidarity across cultural boundaries. The AfD wants to destroy precisely that.”

Hackers publish Berlin data

Rhysida, the ransomware group allegedly behind the August cyberattack against Berlin’s administrative network, has published 1.2 million stolen files on the dark web after the city said it wouldn’t pay the 30-Bitcoin ransom. Chief Digital Officer Florian Hauer said the leaked data is classified as "VS-NfD" (confidential for internal use only), the lowest of four secrecy levels, and does not pose a threat to national security. Well, that’s a relief, isn’t it? Hauer also said officials were still in the early stages of analysis, as downloading and processing the files alone is expected to take a week due to the sheer amount of data. So how do they know what’s really in there? He also said Berliners should remain vigilant about identity theft (change your passwords, beware of phishing). Opposition politicians called the cyberattack a disaster for Berlin’s critical infrastructure.

More sabotage?

Police are investigating a fire in Moabit that began on a construction site but spread to a neigbouring electricity substation. The fire hasn’t been classified as sabotage but comes against the backdrop of five recent suspected acts of sabotage against the power grid across Germany. Police say a 48-year-old man from North-Rhine Westphalia known as Daniel V. has claimed responsibility for the attacks outside of Berlin but remains at large.

CSD memorial defaced

Both a memorial tree and a rainbow-coloured bench honouring the victims of the July 25th attack on the CSD event in Tiergarten were vandalised in separate incidents, taz reports. Unknown perpetrators uprooted the tree and damaged its protective fence. The rainbow bench was destroyed earlier this month. The Mitte administration quickly replanted the tree. District mayor Stefanie Remlinger (Greens) said the tree and bench will be restored repeatedly if necessary: “We will not be intimidated.”

Events this week, curated by The Next Day Berlin

🎨 Berlin Art Week 2026
Wed-Sun 09-13.09 · over 100 venues across the city
Five days, more than a hundred venues, and for once a clear centre of gravity. New this year is the Berlin Art Week Garden at the Kulturforum, tying the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Gemäldegalerie into one open ground with performances by Ersan Mondtag and talks with Nadim Samman. Around it, the usual rhythm: Gallery Night on Thursday with around 50 galleries open until 10 pm, Featured Night on Friday with roughly 30 independent projects, and the Positions fair at the Tempelhof hangars from Thursday to Sunday, 96 galleries with Turkey as country focus. We have a special guide for Berlin Art Week for those who follow the sound.

📷 Carrie Mae Weems. The Heart of the Matter [look]
Opening Friday 11.09 · 9 pm · C/O Berlin, Hardenbergstraße 22-24 · free
Carrie Mae Weems' first full retrospective in Berlin, over a hundred photographs and videos across four decades of putting personal life against the historical record. Running alongside, Stelios Kallinikou and Susanne Kriemann on contaminated ground. Kíkẹ́lọmọ plays the opening.

🎤 Soft Power Festival
Friday 11.09 to Sunday 13.09 · Haus der Visionäre, Eichenstraße 4A · €25-35
Caique Tizzi threads through all three days: a tea ceremony to open Friday, Cakes and Politics with rustcakes on Saturday, and a communal meal to close on Sunday. Saturday is the day to catch Dimitri Hegemann, Norman Ohler, and Alice Hasters on nightlife as infrastructure, Fred P and Ghostpoet on the floor. It's part of Berlin Art Week.

🏭 Tag des offenen Denkmals 2026
Saturday 12.09 and Sunday 13.09 · over 300 monuments, around 700 events citywide · free
This year's motto is NetzWERKE: Denkmale & Infrastruktur. Skip the palaces. This is the working city: tracks, substations, waterworks, greenhouses, things built to function that turned out to be architecture.

🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺

👨‍🦲 Merz says AfD result ‘changes all of Germany’

💩 Musk celebrates, Tusk despairs: How the world reacted to the AfD’s election win

📈 Is Germany’s economic slump finally over?

🤖 Autonomous OpenAI agents reportedly hijacked German wiki

🏛️ Russia shuts German consulate in St. Petersburg in tit-for-tat move after Leipzig drone incident

Factoid

As Germany, in some ways, begins to resemble the Weimar Republic of the 1920s and early 1930s, the fifth and final season of hit show Babylon Berlin starts streaming at ARD on September 10th. The series, Germany’s most expensive and internationally successful, has been sold to around 140 countries. English-language streamers are expected to release season 5 early next year.

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🐻👮#525: Russisches Haus, Union Berlin, Cops’ names

Andrew Bulkeley — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 11:37:12 GMT

Is four discarded mattresses a record or just a good weekend? BSR has since removed them.

Hey 20 Percent,

Germans maybe love the laminated sign more than bread.

Back when we were producing an English edition at the now pro-Russia Berliner Zeitung, they even updated their laminated signs reminding employees to clean up in the kitchen and use the toilet brush to include English.

And so I was surprised when the woman handing me my citizenship certificate two months ago warned me against laminating or punching holes in it.

“That will invalidate it and you’ll have to get a copy that says ‘COPY’ on the front,” she said. “This is the only one you’ll get that looks like this.”

For a brief moment I wondered why I had even become German. A large part of the now-German me wanted to laminate anything paper that came into my grip. And if not laminate then punch holes in it and put it in an ORDNER (two-ring binder).

She then said the thing to do was to get a plastic sleeve and put it in that and then put it in the Ordner. So that’s what I did. I can’t imagine I’ll ever actually look at it again — maybe I’ll show it to my grandkids, if the world survives that long.

And just a quick reminder that you can get tickets for 100% Funny, our English comedy night (Pavlo Voytovych, Fitz Gessler, Carmen Chraim, Masoud Akbarzadeh) here, and our latest podcast here.

Have a good weekend y’all! Maybe laminate something for fun.

Andrew

Russisches Haus closing, sort of

And is there a more German thing than wanting to sanction someone but having bureaucracy get in the way? The German government said it would close the Russisches Haus on Friedrichstraße in Mitte as part of a handful of sanctions against Russia for an attempted drone attack at the Leipzig airport last month, according to Die Zeit. But it’s unclear when exactly the building will close because an agreement between Germany and Russia guarantees the largest Russian cultural center outside Russia can use the building until July 2027 — Germany has begun the official process of ending the agreement in July. Russian employees at the site have been given until Sept. 18 to leave the country but Germany wants to keep to the agreement even though you’d think attempting to bomb cargo plans in Leipzig would allow you to terminate it immediately. The building itself belongs to Russia while the real estate belongs to Germany.

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Union to play at Olympiastadion longer

Berlin’s only top league soccer club has fallen victim to Germany’s love of paperwork. 1. FC Union Berlin will have to play home games at the Olympic stadium six months longer than expected after the bureaucracy coupled with the expansion of its Alte Försterei stadium in Köpenick pushed back construction. Union had expected to play home games at the Charlottenburg stadium, home to cross-town rival Hertha Berlin, during the 2027/2028 season but it will now have to play home games away until early 2029, when the construction is expected to be finished, according to RBB24. The club is spending €190 million to expand its home stadium to 40,000 seats from 22,000.

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The news is already ridiculous. The Kee News makes it worse.

Five comedians bring brand-new jokes about this week's headlines, then let the audience throw news stories at them to riff on live. It's in English, this Saturday at 17:30 at The Wall Comedy Club.

The cuffs are too tight, Andreas

The Berlin cop arresting you is most likely named either Andreas or Nicole, according to the Morgenpost. Those are the two most popular first names among Berlin’s 28,000 officers followed by Anja, Julia, Claudia and Sabine for female officers. For men it’s Thomas, Michael and Christian. Asking about first names is a loaded question in Germany since conservative (and often racist) politicians often call for the release of first names in high-profile cases in order to prove the perps aren’t German and/or come from immigrant families. In this case, I just thought it was funny.

🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺

👷 VW’s engorged workforce

😟 Minorities fear AfD win in Saxony-Anhalt

👩‍🦳 Russia closing local Goethe Institutes

Factoid

The older, quieter sibling. Photo: Messe Berlin

The Funkturm, Berlin’s other television tower, turned 100 Thursday. It opened Sept. 3, 1926, complete with restaurant and visitor platform. The 146-meter tower transmitted its first radio show in 1926 and the first test television signals in 1929. It even transmitted the world’s first-ever TV show in 1932.

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🦋 20 Percent on Bluesky 🐘20 Percent on Mastadon 🧵 20 Percent on Threads 🎙️The 20% Berlin Podcast on Spotify 🎙️The 20% Berlin Podcast on Apple Podcasts

😢 British woman killed in stabbing at Bavarian railway station

#41: Hackers again, Döner, Die Linke campaign SNAFU

Andrew Bulkeley — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 11:15:29 GMT

This week we talk about how hackers want a handful of bitcoin but Berlin isn’t paying and the dumb decision to allow a racist rapper at a Die Linke campaign event. Plus the Bear’s Knees!

#524: Cyberattack ransom; Die Linke criticise rapper; rent cap made things worse?

Maurice Frank — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 09:39:04 GMT

Gesundbrunnen — “Fountain of health”

Hey 20 Percent,

Deutsche Bahn says alcohol consumption is verboten from today (September 1) at the Hauptbahnhof and Gesundbrunnen stations. From October, the ban will apply to stations across Germany.

Now can they please crack down on the smoking? Gesundbrunnen still has “smoking areas” with large ashtrays surrounded by people puffing away but also signs that say “no smoking in the whole station”.

News below!

Maurice

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Berlin refuses to pay €2 million hacker ransom

In the recent cyberattack on Berlin’s state IT network, hackers reportedly stole 5.79 terabytes of sensitive data, including emergency plans, passwords, and 6,000 files with login credentials. The group, believed to be the Rhysida ransomware collective, is demanding a ransom of 30 Bitcoins (€2 million). The city has one week to pay. Hacker association Chaos Computer Club remarked that hackers could sell the passwords and other sensitive official data on the dark web. Meanwhile, Mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) said: “The state of Berlin will not be blackmailed.” The hack began as early as August 7 and it took at least a week to detect the intrusion. Investigations continue with help from US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. Deputy mayor Iris Spranger says the September 20 elections will be “100% secure.”

Rent cap = fewer new flats?

A study by Munich’s ifo Institute claims that Berlin’s rent cap (Mietendeckel), though overturned by the Constitutional Court in 2021, continues to negatively impact the housing market in Berlin. ifo, a generally pro-market think tank, says uncertainty around potential state intervention such as the yet-to-be implemented Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co referendum has led to a significant decline in new construction and renovation, particularly among large players, according to researcher Mathias Dolls. How to fix the housing crisis is probably the main issue in the September 20 Berlin elections.

Linke candidate unhappy about rapper at Linke event

Elif Eralp, mayoral candidate for the left-wing Die Linke party as well as other party officials, criticised rapper Dahabflex for chanting “Yalla Yalla Intifada West Bank, Palestine, Gaza” and “Death to the IDF” at Die Linke’s “Angry at capitalism!” campaign event in Neukölln. Eralp called the chants unacceptable and is demanding consequences. She said she was committed to opposing antisemitism and urged the party’s Neukölln branch to investigate and take action. The incident has triggered a debate over whether the party should focus on Israel-Palestine in the Berlin election.

Events this week, curated by The Next Day Berlin

🖼️ Reopening: Prater Galerie
Thursday · 6 pm · Prater Galerie, Kastanienallee 7-9, Prenzlauer Berg · free
Seven years of building work, and the communal gallery founded here in 1967, in the GDR, is back. Courage: Sisters in Spirit brings together eight women artists, Yevgenia Belorusets and Magdalena Jetelová among them, curated with ifa, and focuses the new program on Eastern Europe. Anke Lucks and Ruth Schepers open on trombone and reeds, HakkaMoon cooks, and Masha Qrella plays records from seven.

🎸 Kurt Vile & The Violators Thursday · 8 pm · Huxleys Neue Welt, Hasenheide 107-113 · €38 Touring Philadelphia's Been Good To Me, his loosest, warmest guitar record yet.

🔊 JOY: Ecko Bazz (live) & DJ Marcelle Friday · 10:30 pm · Sameheads, Richardstraße 10, Neukölln From Kampala, grime and industrial electronics in Luganda, then Marcelle's genre-refusing selection.

🤖 Who Shapes Culture in the Age of AI?
Sunday · 4 pm screening, 5 pm panel · silent green, Gerichtstraße 35 · €11
Anika Meier screens AI-made film and image work, then sits Mat Dryhurst and Simon Denny down to argue in English about who actually owns the models. Dryhurst has been on this since Spawn, Denny makes art out of infrastructure, and the question is finally being asked by people who make things.

🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺

🎮 Germany’s military wants to recruit gamers

🌋 Is Germany’s Laacher See volcano stirring again?

Factoid

Photo: Sebastian Dornblut, Berliner Unterwelten e.V.

Three segments of a CIA Cold War spy tunnel have been rediscovered and are being returned to Berlin. The Berliner Unterwelten association will transport the segments to the Lapidarium at Gartenstraße for temporary storage. The discovery was made during construction work at the Kurmark barracks in Storkow, Brandenburg. The spy tunnel was built by US and UK intelligence services in 1955 and used to tap into Eastern Bloc communications but was discovered by East German and Soviet officials in 1956.

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🦋 20 Percent on Bluesky 🐘20 Percent on Mastadon 🧵 20 Percent on Threads 🎙️The 20% Berlin Podcast on Spotify 🎙️The 20% Berlin Podcast on Apple Podcasts

🦟 Two Frankfurt airport employees die of Malaria

💣🌮 #523: We lead in Döner, hacker ransom, WWII bombs still a problem

Andrew Bulkeley — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 11:02:53 GMT

A 2007 Moderat concert I went to at Podewil. Photo: Me

Hey 20 Percent,

I half-joked to my wife that I was thinking of becoming a part-time BVG tram driver. Yes, it’s a thing.

The next day a book by a woman who became a BVG bus driver appeared on my nightstand thanks to my wife. And it’s a surprisingly great read (apologies — it’s in German but maybe a chance to practice your language skills?).

I had no idea how much training they have to go through. They have to know lots of technical stuff about the various buses as well as the various tickets and then spend their own free time learning the various routes. New bus drivers have to pass two theoretical and one practical test.

It’s also shocking how conservative, sexist and, well, Berlin the BVG bus people are. Or maybe it’s not if you’ve ever taken a bus.

The book is a reminder about the rest of Berlin outside of our international bubbles — the Berlin that keeps Berlin moving. And Berlin Berlin.

Have a good weekend!

Andrew

PS: The 20 Percent English comedy night is back at Berlin’s best comedy club September 20. The lineup isn’t yet set but it will be very, very good — and MCed by me. Come on out! Tix.

Yes, another WWII Bomb

You know who also keeps Berlin moving? The dudes who disarm unexploded WWII munitions, like the bomb discovered in the Neukölln Schifffahrtskanal canal Wednesday — it was disarmed late that night and residents of the 5,600 nearby households could return to their abodes shortly before midnight, according to RBB24. The good news: Brandenburg has more unexploded WWII munition than Berlin. The bad news: Berlin still has an estimated 4,600 Blindgänger (duds, or unexploded WWII bombs) waiting to be discovered.

Döner, Döner and more Döner

And we all know Berlin is fueled by Döner so it’s little surprise our city has more of the snack bar/restaurants (218) than any other German city but we don’t have the highest density, according to Listflix. Mannheim leads with 13.2 Dönerbuden per 100,000 residents followed by Duisburg with 13.1 and inexplicably Bavarian Augsburg with 11.3. The cities have 42, 66, and 34 of the places, respectively. Do we have the best? There’s no really great Döner, just your Döner (mine’s Seitan with plant-based sauces).

Murdered woman found near planetarium

And there are stark reminders that we live in a big city: Park visitors Monday found a female corpse on the edge of Ernst-Thälmann-Park between the planetarium and the S-Bahn that had gone undiscovered, possibly for weeks, according to Tagesspiegel. The woman was murdered and was part of vagrant groups around Helmholtzplatz even though she lived in a nearby apartment. Visitors were alerted to her body by the smell of decay but the discovery is especially surprising as thousands had lined up just a few meters away to get free solar eclipse glasses at the planetarium Aug. 12. In a similar case in 2017, passersby discovered the body of art historian Susanne Fontaine in bushes along a popular Tiergarten path adjacent to the S-Bahn about a week after she had been murdered. The murder was given a life sentence in 2019 — police are still looking for a suspect in the planetarium case.

Hacker attack still a problem

Someone’s always going to try to get the city to stop moving and city officials have now received a ransom note following a hacker attack on the transport and urban development offices earlier this month, according to RBB24. Law enforcement and intelligence officials are meeting Friday to discuss the note though it’s unclear if it’s from the same hacker. The note comes a day after officials admitted the hackers gained access to Berlin government servers far earlier than thought — they apparently broke in Aug. 7, a week before specialists discovered the breech and took several departments offline.

🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺

💩 AfD hoping Ostalgie will get them votes

✈️ Another drone, explosives found near Leipzig

Factoid

Berlin rule: Regardless of what you’re looking for, a Berlin graf artist has spraypainted it on a wall somewhere. Photo: Mai Le via CC2.0.

83 people died waiting for an organ transplant last year and just 33 Berliners donated an organ posthumously, a fifth less than in 2024, according to RBB24. 414 Berliners are awaiting an organ transplant, including 355 hoping for a kidney. Still, Berlin doctors transplanted 234 organs last year — 109 kidneys, 51 livers and 38 hearts. If you wish to donate organs, you can add yourself to the national organ donation list, get an organ donation card to carry with you (the most common method of organ donation) or you can add a note to your will. More English info here (if you missed that earlier link). I carry the card as a final joke — transplant doctors would take one look at me, laugh and say, “No one wants THIS.”

🔗 🔗 🔗 Useful links 🔗 🔗 🔗

🦋 20 Percent on Bluesky 🐘20 Percent on Mastadon 🧵 20 Percent on Threads 🎙️The 20% Berlin Podcast on Spotify 🎙️The 20% Berlin Podcast on Apple Podcasts

#522: Election tools, computer problems, missing taxes

Maurice Frank — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 11:36:32 GMT

Maybe a little vapid as far as political messaging goes but I think we could use more of this vibe in our messed-up times.

Hey 20 Percent,

With the Berlin state election on September 20th rapidly approaching, our friends over at WahlHEYMat, an organisation dedicated to getting international Berliners more involved in politics, has published its StimmlosTrend survey to find out which issues people without German citizenship care about. It’s totally anonymous and takes just a few minutes to complete.

And in case you’re curious how your political positions on local issues align with the 17 parties on the ballot, check out the 38-question Berlin Wahl-o-mat or, alternatively, the Kandidierenden Check, which lets you compare your views to those of your local candidates. Both tools are in German only. Thankfully, Potsdam University has built a similar site — Party Check — in German, English and Turkish. It focuses more on big-picture political values rather than detailed. I tried all three and had very different results. Quite fun!

News below!

Maurice

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🚨 Germany investigates Russia links to weapons cache discovered in woods

Still in the dark about our big IT system

Ten days after a debilitating cyberattack on the city’s IT network, the government admits it is still a bit clueless the incident. Replying to questions posed by members of the Berlin state parliament, Chief Digital Officer Florian Hauer (CDU) said there were “no reliable findings” with respect to the attackers’ identity, timing and methods, or exactly what data they were able to access. Two departments were taken offline for a week. American cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike is investigating. “The state IT system is very large,” Hauer said. “We are surprised how large it is.” While the affected departments are now “basically functional”, he warned it’s “too early to give the all-clear.”

Speaking of IT

Berlin’s Finanzämter (tax offices) have faced hundreds of hours of downtime annually thanks to IT failures. There have been 139 severe outages since 2023. Last year saw 64 serious incidents including 14 “total system crashes”. The government provided the data at the request of SPD parliamentarian Sebastian Schlüsselburg, who argued that the IT problems hampered the state’s ability to collect taxes. He said 76% of major outages affected enforcement and yet the administration claims no revenue has been lost due to IT issues. Last week it was revealed that Berlin is owed €870 million in back taxes.

Vests not bulletproof

“Scandalous!” “A failure!” Berlin’s interior affairs minister Iris Spranger (SPD) has vented her anger at German defense corp Rheinmetall for allegedly supplying the Berlin police with defective ceramic plates used in bulletproof vests. The vests were found to be no longer bulletproof during routine checks. Berlin purchased the kit in 2017 with a 10-year guarantee but now it has to be taken out of service. Spranger is demanding immediate compensation and threatened to sue. 2,000 new plates have been ordered from another supplier.

Celebrity bathroom incident

Meanwhile, some real news: US comedian Zarna Garg got stuck in the bathroom of the Hermès store on Ku’damm for an hour. The Berlin fire deparmment finally freed her. Her family made an amusing reaction video.

Events this week, curated by The Next Day Berlin

🎸 USU pres.: Papangu + M. Takara & Carla Boregas
Tuesday 25.08 · doors 7:30 pm · Neue Zukunft, Alt-Stralau 68 · €20
Papangu formed in João Pessoa in 2012 and their sound sits somewhere between sludge metal and the syncopation of the Brazilian Northeast, closer to Hermeto Pascoal than to any metal band you'd expect. Celestial, their new record, is a statement against AI generated music, made fully analog. Carla Boregas and M. Takara open, drums against synths, playing as a duo since 2018.

📽️ Good Bye, Lenin!
Thursday, 7:30 pm · Stasi Museum, Ruschestraße 103 · free
Closing night of the Campus-Kino, played outdoors in the courtyard of the Stasi headquarters. English subtitles, film quiz at 7:10.

💬 75 Jahre Berliner Festspiele
Thursday-Sunday · Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Gropius Bau, Philharmonie and the Ringbahn · talks free, concerts and tours ticketed
Seventy-five years folded into four days. Adam Tooze and Nesrine Malik open Thursday on what a multipolar world does to liberal institutions. Angela Merkel sits with the curators on Saturday. Sunday closes with Gabriel Boric, Signal's Meredith Whittaker and eco-philosopher Corine Pelluchon on what we need to know next

📻 Refuge Worldwide Free Open-Air
Sunday, noon · Beach Neukölln, Treptower Str. 39, 12059, v · RSVP & donation
Two stages, one on the sand and one for families, poet James Massiah, four food stalls.

☝️ Save the date: The next 20% Berlin News Quiz is on Wednesday, September 16th

🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺

🏛️ German neo-Nazi suspected of deadly 1970 arson at Jewish retirement home

🌍 UK, France, Germany, Italy and Canada condemn Israel's West Bank settlement project

🎭 Bauhaus Manifesto: Broad alliance promoting artistic freedom

Factoid

Once of the major issues in the Berlin election next month is whether or not the government should follow up on the successful 2021 citizens’ referendum on expropriating large landlords. Voters are split down the middle, with 43% in favour of forcing corporations to sell their residential properties to the state and 44% against. Unsurprisingly, 82% of Die Linke supporters favour the move, while 88% of CDU folks oppose it. Die Linke tops the polls, just ahead of the CDU.

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🔥 Is the firewall helping, not harming, the far-right?

#521: Germans hate Berlin, RAW saved, bye Russisches Haus

Andrew Bulkeley — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 10:20:59 GMT

You can go on top of Tempelhof airport! Photo: Heipl Berlin

Hey 20 Percent,

ARD, that broadcaster we all pay for, has a UK series in original English. The Gold, about a 1980s heist, will be available until Sept. 18. I’ve never seen a non-dubbed series there before, but I’m probably wrong.

The writing is a bit over-the-top but it’s a fun watch, if only to discover how much dirty money is behind London real estate (as well as Switzerland and Liechtenstein’s role).

Also, if your German is good enough, I listened to a great podcast asking whether reunification came too quick in Germany. It has some excellent tidbits — like how France (as well as the UK) opposed re-unification and saw the euro as a way to lessen Teutonic power.

Did I say podcast? Our latest podcast is also out, also in video! We talk about the Volksbühne swimming pool fiasco and Germany’s inability to sandwich. As in the food. Here, if you missed the link above.

Have a good weekend!

Andrew

PS: The 20 Percent English comedy night is back at Berlin’s best comedy club September 20. The lineup isn’t yet set but it will be very, very good — and MCed by me. Come on out! Tix.

Germans hate Berlin

Only 31% of Germans now see Berlin as a “fascinating metropolis”, down from 66% in 2007, according to an Allensbach poll initiated by the boomer-esque Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) earlier this month. I’m quoting the Tagesspiegel because the FAZ article is paywalled. Pollsters said Hamburg had the most appeal among German cities followed by Munich and then our Hauptstadt (48%, 47% and 36%, respectively). Note that Frankfurt — home of the paper — only appeared when people were asked where they absolutely don’t want to live: Berlin and Frankfurt were level at 46%. They’re the only two German cities I've lived in.

RAW Gelände agreement

Berlin has apparently caved to a real estate developer’s demands to build apartments on the RAW Gelände cultural hotspot, according to RBB24. In exchange, clubs at the site won a fresh two-year lease with hopes for a more permanent 30-year lease as negotiations continue. Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg will cover the €1 million lease on the site and an administrator will then collect rent from the various clubs, though it’s unclear who will appoint the administrator. Owner Kurth Immobiliengruppe will now be allowed to build 300 apartments as well as an office building on the property, though the apartments will have to have special noise-dampening construction as clubs will remain at the site adjacent to the Warschauer Strasse S-Bahn station.

Sanctioning Russisches Haus

The German government may cancel an agreement with Russia that allows Russia to operate the Russisches Haus culture center on Friedrichstrasse, according to Der Spiegel. The cancellation would be part of sanctions against Moscow for its suspected involvement in an explosive drone attack at the Leipzig airport on Aug. 4. The drone was discovered before it could explode next to Ukrainian cargo planes. Russia would likely respond by expelling the Goethe Institut — Germany’s cultural centers abroad — from offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Although ostensibly only cultural, experts have long suspected Moscow uses the building for spy activities because the gigantic embassy on Unter den Linden isn’t apparently enough.

Hacker attack still a problem

A number of administrative tasks are still offline in Berlin more than a week after hackers accessed sensitive government information, according to Tagesspiegel. Online applications for construction and historic preservation permits as well as special use permits like temporary no-parking zones or tree removal aren’t possible. The Berlin transport and urban development offices were cut off from the internet after hackers accessed their internal communication networks, meaning workers can’t receive or answer external emails or processes — access has yet to be restored. Some recipients of social welfare payments are also waiting for their cash.

🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺

🛢️ Hormuz harming gas storage levels

🤿 The next Nordstream suspect

Factoid

Most people just know them from movies but some of us from our childhoods in the American Midwest: Berlin has tornadoes! A tornado touched down 50 km from the capital Wednesday afternoon in Fürstenwalde, uprooting a few trees and sending one through a residential roof, according to the Morgenpost. The tornado rated a IF1 on the tornado scale, according to the DWD German weather service. That’s apparently a 3 on the 1-9 scale of tornado intensities. At least three people suffered minor injuries.
@mr.wasgehtdichdasan187 Tornado vor der Haustür gefilmt in Fürstenwalde/Spree #weather #fürdich #foryoupagе #viral #foryou #unwetter #fy #storm #tornado #orkan #Fürstenwalde
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Private health insurance in Germany: why September matters

If you’re thinking about switching to private health insurance, applying before 30 September could save you money. It may also be your last chance to qualify.

Here’s why: to join as an employee, you need to earn above a set income threshold. Right now that’s €77,400 a year. In January 2027 it’s expected to rise to around €85,000, so some people who qualify today won’t qualify next year.

Private cover sounds like the expensive option. For a lot of expats in Germany, it isn’t. Our standard plan can work out around €370 a month cheaper than public insurance.

How you’ll benefit the most:

Another €140 a month off for your first five years in Europe (if you’re a non-EU citizen)
Faster appointments, because most doctors keep extra slots for privately insured patients
Better coverage, especially for preventive and dental care
Full worldwide cover for trips up to six months
Cashback for every year you don’t claim

Not sure if you’re eligible? You can check without any commitment when you get a free quote. And if you’d rather talk it through with a person, our team is here.

Compare plans and get your quote

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🐘20 Percent on Mastodon

Limited spots available, apply now to join.

#40: Hacker attack, Saxony-Anhalt election, Volksbad fiasco, Bureaucracy

Andrew Bulkeley — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 08:34:18 GMT

In episode 40 we discuss the hacker attack on the German administration and debate how really worthwhile the swimming pool in front of the Volksbühne is, because it isn’t about the people, it’s mostly just about the Volksbühne’s new director. Also, let’s whittle down some of the German bureaucracy. And does anyone not love the Deutsche Technikmuseum?

#520: Cyberattack, homeless voters, fewer BER passengers

Maurice Frank — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 10:14:26 GMT

An encampment near Flughafensee, Tegel.

Hey 20 Percent,

On the way to the S-Bahn, we pass a pile of mattresses. There’s a motionless body under a dirty blanket. At the station, blocking the entrance, two men are hunched over a piece of tin foil, fiddling with a lighter. On the train, a man is sleeping on the floor. In a tunnel in Friedrichstraße, a woman wanders around barefoot, lost. Every day, it seems, I see more impoverished, desperate people. Almost everywhere in the city. Homelessness has been bad for years in Berlin but now Germany is in the midst of a crack and fentanyl epidemic that is wrecking lives. Last year there were a record 300 drug-related deaths in the city.

The SPD mayoral candidate Steffen Krach wants to boost spending on addiction counselling programmes and drug policies after years of cuts. He hopes to slash the bureaucracy and waiting times users have to endure to join counselling programmes. He hopes to finance 1,000 more Housing First spots (up from about 350), where homeless people are given a proper place to live without bureaucratic hurdles. The destitution is, of course, a visible symptom of the greater housing and poverty crisis. And shows, again, that housing remains the key issue in the Berlin elections in September. Whoever cracks this hard problem should be able to rule Berlin for decades.

News below.

Maurice

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Over time, they become people you can rely on.

Berlin hacked

The Berlin government announced Monday that the state’s own IT network was hit by a cyberattack, with hackers exploiting a vulnerability in both the Housing and Urban Development and Transport departments. “Sensitive data” has been stolen, authorities said. Both departments have been cut off from the internet since Friday. “Without internet and email, work is practically impossible,” said an employee of the transport department. Only phone communication is permitted. A task force is investigating the breach.

Homeless voter registration

For the first time, homeless people in Berlin can register to vote at a day center in Pankow ahead of the September 20 state election. The pilot project allows them to add their names to the voter registry and immediately cast a mail-in ballot at the Sozialprojekt Prenzlauer Berg facility. To take part, voters have to show an official ID.

CSD solidarity concert

“Fresse auf für queere Freiheit” translates roughly to “Open your mouth for queer freedom.” That’s the name of the sold-out benefit concert featuring German musicians like veteran singer Herbert Grönemeyer and Berlin rapper Ikkemel at Columbiahalle tonight. Proceeds go to queer counselling centre Schwulenberatung as well as various Pride organisers in rural eastern Germany.

Bureaucracy haircut?

In the run-up to the election, IHK Berlin (the chamber of industry and commerce) claims halving red tape could free up 35 working days for a small company employing 20 people. Suggestions include eliminating outdated regulations, replacing approval requirements with simple notifications where possible, and reviewing costly rules like species protections and accessibility standards that inflate construction costs. All that could result in an additional €1 billion in economic output and create thousands of jobs. The IHK director said: “What is needed is a systematic review across all departments of the administration.” So, will Berlin be getting doged? Doubtful. That probably won’t be the priority of the Linke-Green-SPD coalition expected to take over.

Airport S-Bahn disruption

From today (August 18) through August 31, a section of the S-Bahn line running to the airport will be out of service thanks to track maintenance. Between Treptower Park and Schöneweide, replacement buses will be running instead. If you can, take a train from Südkreuz or Ostkreuz. Here’s a full list of summer S-Bahn closures.

Events this week, curated by The Next Day Berlin

🪩 UNCLOUDED Thursday · 5–10 pm · Neue Nationalgalerie, Potsdamer Straße 50 · Free Sound Metaphors play Balearic house and deep-cut disco into the sunset while Circadian pours rare Japanese teas instead of the usual bar.

📷 200 Years and Counting
Saturday · 12 pm–12 am · C/O Berlin, Hardenbergstraße 22-24 · Free with exhibition ticket (€15/8), registration is required
C/O turns two hundred years of photography into an argument with itself: Kate Crawford's keynote on what AI slop costs the planet, and a wet plate collodion camera developing portraits in the courtyard all afternoon, first come first served. Panels between them, shorts at 9 pm.

🌻FLORA Festival '26, Session 10 Saturday · 5–9 pm · Location TBA · Free Free, solar-powered deep listening outdoors, nomadic; location goes out on Telegram the day before.

👠Berlin Drag Festival Sunday · 12–8 pm · Festsaal Kreuzberg, Am Flutgraben 2 · €39.55 Pandora Nox, who won Drag Race Germany, and Soa de Muse from Drag Race France headline a full day with over ten Berlin queens and a queer creators' market.

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🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺

🗣️ Germany rethinks law protecting politicians from insults

🎭 The AfD’s war on culture

🚘 Access to telemetry data: Auto industry criticizes intelligence agency reform

🤢 ‘Soon I’ll really start to puke’: Samuel Beckett’s travels around Nazi Germany

Factoid

BER saw fewer passengers in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period in 2025. 11.9 million people (minus 1.2%), used the airport. By comparison, in the first six months of record-year 2019, 17 million passengers travelled via the old Tegel or Schönefeld airports. Why the drop? Covid, airlines pulling flights, a drop in Berlin tourism? Who really knows? Despite the occasional new international connection, (there’s a new direct flight to Syria), it looks like Germany’s capital and largest city will remain an air travel backwater for the foreseeable future.

a message from our friends at Berlin non-profit Masterpiece for Good

Pink Silence Avignon is a participatory art installation featuring 365 pink bed sheets, designed to combat gender-based violence. Avignon was chosen deliberately: it was here that the Gisèle Pelicot trial took place, sparking a global debate on violence, silence and social responsibility. Together with schools, organisations and the local community, we’re creating a space for visibility, dialogue and collective action.

365 works of art. 365 stories. A social sculpture against gender-based violence.

Find out more and support our crowdfunding campaign here.

🔗 🔗 🔗 Useful links 🔗 🔗 🔗

🤖 Pols to remove hobbles on intelligence services

🏊 🌒#519: Black swim cancelled, ChatGPT in Berlin, eclipse eye pain

Andrew Bulkeley — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 11:33:33 GMT

Me and Hubertus are just to the left. Grainy concert footage by Heipl Berlin.

Hey 20 Percent,

I got my official election materials from Berlin Thursday and after being annoyed that what could have just been an email was a letter AND an envelope, I enjoyed the moment as a new German.

I thought I had already decided how I was going to vote but then some friends invited us to a concert at Wühlheide Thursday night. I was watching the opening band when I realized Hubertus Heil (SPD) was sitting next to me.

Heil’s been a parliamentarian since 1998, coincidentally the year I accidentally emigrated to Germany, and was labor minister in the ill-fated traffic light coalition under Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD).

The traffic-light coalition that reformed immigration laws and made it possible for me to become German and keep my American passport. Ergo, to become German.

We chatted some and I thanked him and he couldn’t have been more nice, and I started wondering if I owed the SPD a vote for enabling my German-ness. Do I?

Now I don’t know how I’ll vote. Have a good weekend — it’s supposed to be hot.

Andrew

Even swimming is a problem now

Racist comments and threats led the Volksbühne to cancel a joint event planned for Friday with the Each One Teach One association (Eoto) that would have opened the theater’s Volksbad pool only for young Black swimmers from 12pm to 6pm Friday, according to RBB24. The Volksbühne and Eoto said they couldn’t guarantee the safety of the swimmers, even with the assistance of the police, following the threats. Right-wing German media latched onto the event as racist since the pool would only be open to Black swimmers although the event was private. The pool was already closed most of the week because the showers were broken. Eoto says it is “a community-based education and empowerment organization, as well as a place of learning and encounter, for people of African descent.” How can right-wing idiots get such a great event cancelled?

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People flake.

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Consistency is what’s missing.

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Germans call it either “Chatty” or just “Chat”

Are you looking for a job because you were replaced by AI? ChatGPT creator OpenAI will open a second German office in Berlin “relatively soon”, CEO Sam Altman said during an interview with financial daily Handelsblatt. Germany is OpenAI’s biggest European market for paid subscriptions and is one of its three largest markets. The company only has an office in Munich. Altman said talks with Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) and finance minister Lars Klingbeil (SPD) about opening a data center have proven unfruitful.

Is BVG … improving?

Public transport provider BVG has become more reliable and is reviving at least one mothballed bus line, according to Tagesspiegel. Reliability by subways — how many trains ran as planned — rose to 98.5% in the first half of the year from 94.3% last year and 91.7% in 2024. Trams improved to 99.3% from 98.6% while buses bumped up 0.1 percentage points to 99.6%. But the services experienced delays at the same level as last year. BVG will also reintroduce the 310 bus in Charlottenburg and extend the M77 bus in Marienfelde. The frequency of X33 from Spandau will also be increased, the first improvement in bus service since 2023.

Eclipsed

Charité hospital treated 10 eye patients and the eye emergency room in Marzahn saw 29 patients with eye complaints after staring directly at Wednesday’s eclipse, even though each and every media outlet warned against doing just that, according to Tagesspiegel. The Vivantes hospital in Neukölln treated another 10. Most, the paper noted, were under 35. Minor burns to the retina can heal but severe burns are permanent and can affect eyesight. Police also had to be called to the Planetarium in Prenzlauer Berg Wednesday after 3,000 people queued up in hopes of getting a free pair of glasses to watch the eclipse and some grew impatient.

🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺

🌀 Drought threatens German recovery

Factoid

No notes. Photo: Robert Scarth

Construction on the Berlin Wall began unexpectedly on Aug. 13, 1961 — 65 years ago. East German leader Walter Ulbricht telegraphed the construction during a press conference on June 15 of that same year when asked if East Germany planned to create a border with West Germany at Brandenburg Gate. “Nobody is planning on building a wall,” Ulbricht said. The West German journalist had asked him about a border, not a barrier, and his denial is now seen as prophetic.

🔗 🔗 🔗 Useful links 🔗 🔗 🔗

#518: Landlord fined, club death, mall homes, Nazi concert

Maurice Frank — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 11:33:51 GMT

Photo: me

Hey 20 Percent,

According to a new study by the Club Commission, only 61% of Berlin’s club operators say they’re breaking even; 23% say they’re thinking about throwing in the towel and closing their club.

A number of factors play a role: higher rents; higher wage and energy costs; people buying fewer alcoholic drinks and going home earlier.

Call me nostalgic, but this is not good news for Berlin. Since I arrived here in the Dark Ages, the diverse buffet of independent nightlife establishments has been the city’s defining USP. Berlin’s ability to attract young talent is directly linked to nightlife and alternative culture.

Time to divert more of Berlin’s €600 million in culture funding towards clubs?

YES.

The city ploughs €172 million into its three opera houses alone each year. It’s hard to say exactly how much goes into clubs, but operators say just 2% of their income comes from state funding, probably funding for one-off special projects. I don’t want to pick on opera, but does it make sense that the taxpayer covers 72% of the cost of an opera ticket while clubs get mere crumbs?

Clubs are more essential to Berlin’s identity, image and reputation than opera. Besides, opera — being a fancy, posh artform — can surely attract more private sponsorship funding than currently. Or just stomach slightly higher ticket prices.

Funnel €20-30 million to the clubs. A lot could be done.

Meanwhile, we should just go clubbing more often, even us oldies.

What do you think?

News below.

Maurice

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🚨 US intelligence believes Russia was behind Leipzig drone

Landlord fined for rent gouging

A Berlin district court has fined a landlord €1,000 for rent gouging (paywall) under Germany’s Commercial Criminal Law’s (Wirtschaftsstrafrecht) “exploitation of scarce supply” provision. The case involved an apartment in Kreuzberg’s Katzbachstraße where the landlord was found to have “exploited Berlin’s housing shortage”, according to judge Wolfgang Konecny. This ruling could strengthen district authorities’ ability to combat illegal rent increases. The rent at the start of a new tenancy cannot exceed “the local comparative rent” (“Ortsübliche Vergleichsmiete”, which can be found in the Mietspiegel) by more than 10%. If you suspect excessive rent, you’re entitled to a consultation with the Rent Review Office (info in English and other languages) who will advise further steps. In a few cases, districts themselves have sued landlords, with Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, in particular, having some success.

My place at the mall

Another way of chipping away at the housing problem: The owner of the Boulevard Berlin shopping centre in Steglitz is converting former retail spaces into 217 mini-apartments. The project is repurposing 16,000 sqm. With e-commerce battling malls and home office reducing the need for IRL offices, this is part of a growing trend of converting commercial property into residential units.

App to avoid ticket Kontrolleure

A new web-based app allows public transport patrons to warn others against active ticket checkers to help Schwarzfahrer dodge fines for riding without a ticket, according to Berliner Morgenpost (paywall or this summary by T-Online). The Freifahren app has a map of Berlin public transport routes with red warning signs highlighting where checkers have been spotted — they appear to be very active on the U5 today. The BVG has said it loses up to €25 million per annum to Schwarzfahren and said those using the app “lack solidarity”. Probably better to buy a ticket but also: BVG needs to stop hiring sometimes-racist thugs to enforce ticketing.

Nazi rock in Lichtenberg

At the other end of town, extreme rightwing party Die Heimat (formerly NPD) held an unregistered rock concert at their Köpenick office on Saturday (paywall) featuring bands like Lunikoff Verschwörung. Around 250 people showed up, including known neo-Nazis from across the country. People wore Ku Klux Klan masks or T-shirts with Nazi slogans. Police intervened following noise complaints and arrested a 52-year-old man for shouting Nazi propaganda and assaulting a photographer.

Another unicorn in the stable

Despite all the economic gloom, Berlin founders continue to rake in investment. Mitte-based fintech firm Moss just raised €30m, boosting its valuation to over €1 billion. Moss is a “digital spend management platform for European SMEs” aka a nifty AI-automation finance tool to keep a grip on business lunches. Moss says it has 5,000 customers and employs 350.

Events this week, curated by The Next Day Berlin

😶‍🌫️ Sound in the Garden
Thu-Sun · 6:30 pm · Neue Nationalgalerie, Potsdamer Straße 50 · €23 to 30 per night, series ticket available Curated with CTM around Fujiko Nakaya’s fog sculpture. Dopplereffekt live with Space Afrika Thursday, Hildur Guðnadóttir and Sam Slater with Slauson Malone 1 Friday, Michael Rother playing NEU! and Harmonia Saturday. Sunday is recorded works sounding inside the fog all day, and the vapour behaves differently after dark

🎪 Berlin Circus Festival
Saturday-Sunday · Tempelhofer Feld, entrance at S+U Tempelhof
The twelfth edition ends this weekend, and its spine this year is a Catalan focus built with the APCC and the Institut Ramon Llull. Cia Manel Rosés plays Akri at half seven and Cia Totapedra does Pifia twice a day, with Collective Rage closing at half eight. Three tents and an outdoor stage, plus a show of work on circus, body and city.

💃🏽 Rave The Planet Parade 2026 Saturday · 2 pm · Straße des 17. Juni · Free - you can check the floats here Dr. Motte has called this a demonstration since 1989 and won techno its UNESCO heritage listing, arguing exactly that. Thirty floats leaning hard techno and trance, the whole axis closed.

🪩 GROOVE x Studio Liberté
Sunday · 2 pm · Sonnenraum, Eichenstraße 4A · €17-22
DJ Assault and DJ Godfather carry Detroit ghettotech; Detroit in Effect and SLIC Unit carry the older lineage; Danny Daze comes from Miami; Modeselektor and SALOME play at home. Electro in every dialect, running 14 hours.

🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺

🚨 Germany battling ‘daily’ hybrid warfare attacks, minister warns

🚨 Far-right AfD extends its lead in nationwide polls

📉 Germany’s long industrial decline

⚽ Bayern’s Harry Kane to receive Golden Shoe award

Factoid

About 1.4 million Berlin residents are excluded from the September election, including non-German citizens and children under 16. And so, the Migrationsrat (migrant council) and Berliner Späti e.V. are organizing an unofficial election at Spätis where non-eligible residents can cast symbolic ballots. Give it a go! Also, check out the work of our friends at WahlHEYmat, which focuses on getting more non-citizens involved in Berlin politics.

📫Postkutsche (mail coach)

20% Berlin subscriber Lucy wrote to us about an observation she made at Hauptbahnhof:

“Thanks for all your fantastic reporting. Regarding the tragic CSD attack, I wanted to also share something I saw yesterday when I passed through Hauptbahnhof. The ad screens around the station were displaying a flickering candle (without text) followed by a stock photo of rainbow coloured pigment exploding. A vague tribute, I thought, but at least some form of showing reverence following the attack. But then - and this is what shocked me - these images were followed by an advert for some car/car rental company which displayed the words “Egal was passiert ist (whatever happens)” and then more text saying something like “bleib entspannt (stay relaxed)”. This juxtaposition was so disrespectful, somehow even worse than if it had only been ads on the screen.”

If you missed it, here’s out latest pod — with better audio, made with proper equipment!

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🏊 👨‍⚖️#517: Adlon for sale, free swimming, air-con in every tram

Andrew Bulkeley — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 11:26:18 GMT

Pool preparation. Photo: Me

Hey 20 Percent,

Shout out to EU party Volt for best improvement in campaign posters.

They used to specialize in cryptic posters that annoyed more than informed but this year they’ve come out screaming with one containing a tiring list of what they see as wrong with Berlin (I mostly agree).

Another highlights the solution to Berlin’s apartment problem — using Berlin’s own property companies to build lots of flats. Their “unfuck Berlin” posters are still annoying but I’ll give them credit for trying.

And their posters for individual candidates are cringe but delightfully so.

This isn’t an ad for them — they don’t have a chance of clearing the 5% hurdle to make it into government so I’ll be voting for someone else.

But I like their posters.

Listen to this week’s podcast to find out my favorite poster — from an aesthetic, not political, point of view.

Have a good, not-so-hot weekend!

Andrew

PS: If you missed it, the latest episode of our podcast is out and please visit this issue’s sponsor, Feather insurance for your liability needs.

The People’s Swimming Pool?

The Volksbad public swimming pool at Volksbühne opens today, ostensibly to protest Berlin’s lack of infrastructure spending but mostly just to give publicity to the Volksbühne and its new director. Tickets are free and can be booked (here) three days in advance but the pool at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Mitte is closed Sundays and Mondays so you won’t be able to sign up for Tuesday until this weekend. I’ll try it once, I guess. It’ll close Oct. 1.

A CDU mayor again?

Ines Schwerdtner, the co-head of the leftist Die Linke party, told Stern magazine her party would only form a coalition following Berlin’s September election with other parties willing to pursue the nationalization of privately-owned flats. The party leads recent polls but would need to link up with two other parties to gain a majority, most likely environmentalists Die Grüne and the center-left SPD. The stance may allow the conservative CDU to remain the senior partner in Berlin’s ruling coalition since other parties, including the SPD and Die Grüne, then said they were unwilling to accept the demand to enter a coalition. The only other constellation would have the CDU (polling at 18%), die Grüne (16%) and the SPD (13%) ruling together. Voters in 2021 approved a referendum to limit corporate landlords to just 3,000 Berlin apartments and force them to sell the excess to Berlin but politicians have yet to craft the corresponding law.

The 20% Suite at Adlon?

Some corporate landlords are volunteering to leave the Berlin market. Investor Fundus-Fonds 31 may soon put the Adlon Hotel on the auction block with a price tag of €280 million, according to Der Spiegel. The fund has asked its 4,000 investors for approval to sell the luxury hotel adjacent to the Brandenburg Gate after some investors said they’d rather have cash than suites and restaurants. But if you bought it you’d have to wait until 2032 to open your own hotel at the site — hotel chain Kempinski’s lease runs until then and they themselves may be interested in the property.

Air-conditioned trams

All BVG trams will be air conditioned by 2031 as aging trams without the convenience will be replaced by more modern, cooler models, according to T-Online. Only 113 of its 379 trains lack air conditioning though, if you’ve ridden in them on a hot day, you know it’s more a suggestion of air conditioning than actual air conditioning.

🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺

🤖 Explosive Russian drone in Leipzig?

🌀 RWE caves to Trump on windmills

Factoid

Recreation.

Berliners affected by January’s blackout have been reimbursed a total of €900,000 for hotel costs, according to RBB24. 3,100 people applied for reimbursement and so far 2,900 applications have been reviewed with stays costing an average of between €52 to €55 per person per night. 129 applications were rejected and 54 were voluntarily rescinded. An estimated 100,000 people in 45,000 households were without power from Jan. 3 to 7 following an as-yet unsolved attack on power cables in southwestern Berlin.

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🛂 Germany deports Bob Vylan frontman for anti-Israel chants

#39: Unemployment, Campaign posters, Speckgürtel

Andrew Bulkeley — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 10:46:14 GMT

We talk about national unemployment, campaign posters, the AfD leading in at least one poll and the concentric circles renters are causing in Brandenburg around Berlin.

🔫🚂#516: CSD vigil, welfare cuts hit seniors, Kotti surveillance, scammer

Maurice Frank — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 11:07:09 GMT

Hey 20 Percent,

I’m a bit of a public transport nerd so I was happy to see this beast upgrading an S-Bahn line I use daily, despite the disruption in service. When else to do this work than in summer?

Yesterday was my first day back on the S- and U-Bahn after a couple of weeks away. After a trip to the pristine Bavarian mountains, my beloved Berlin tranport seemed dirtier than ever. The U-Bahn stations, tunnels, cars and doors were caked with an even thicker layer of grime, gum, and mystery substances than before. Were the cleaners also on vacation?

A month ago, somebody power-washed the floors at an U-Bahn station I pass through a lot. It’s irrational, but just seeing those shiny, grime-free tiles brightened my mood. More power-washing please, BVG!

News below.

Maurice

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CSD vigil

On Sunday, thousands, including local politicians, came together for a vigil in Tiergaren to honour the victims of the terrorist attack on the CSD pride march, at which one Polish woman was killed and 31 people were injured. On Saturday, hundreds of thousands showed up for Hamburg’s pride march and Berlin’s CSD association, which organises the event here, was represented by a float. Meanwhile, apparently as a direct reaction to the CSD attack, a Berlin court has allowed the police to monitor four people from the Islamist scene using GPS ankle devices.

Berlin’s elderly would be hit by cuts

Elderly Berliners could be massively affected by plans by the Merz government to cut housing benefit (Wohngeld) funding from €5 billion to €3 billion annually. According to stats released by the government, the number of pensioners relying on Grundsicherung (basic welfare) and Wohngeld in Berlin has surged, with the cost rising from from €287 million in 2020 to €521 million in 2025. The ranks of elderly housing benefit recipients has quadrupled since 2015 to 33,000. Women are disproportionately affected. Die Linke politician Pascal Meiser, who submitted the request for data to the federal government, warned that “an even greater wave of poverty amongst the elderly is set to sweep over the capital in the future”.

AI at Kotti

No, it’s not Kreuzberg’s latest unicorn startup, it’s the police. They’re testing AI-assisted video surveillance at the notorious Kottbusser Tor, with plans to expand to Warschauer Straße. Berlin’s head of interior affairs Iris Spranger (SPD) emphasizes the system analyses “movement patterns,” not faces. The €2.47 million pilot (2026-2030) aims to combat street crime in high-risk areas. Critics call it “expensive security theatre,” while police unions say it will boost public safety. While surveillance might have its place, I sometimes wonder why the hell the police set up their mini-police station at Kotti in the first place? It’s clearly made zero difference in the amount of dealing and using of hard drugs in broad daylight on the square.

Senior scammed

In a depressing way, this story brings together (fake) cops and seniors. Back in May, the (real) police say, a 76-year-old Charlottenburger was tricked into handing over his stash of gold by scammers posing as police officers, who falsely claimed his daughter was jailed after causing a traffic accident. Using what’s known as the “shock call” tactic, the fraudsters demanded immediate bail payment, and the victim complied by giving his actual gold to a stranger. Berlin police are now looking for the suspect using surveillance footage and have appealed to the public for information. I’ve been hearing stories like this among my friends for years — usually elderly parents being pressured into a forking over cash or assets to pay for some kind of emergency situation.

Events this week, curated by The Next Day Berlin

🎸 Ana Frango Elétrico
Thursday · 7 pm · Lido, Cuvrystr. 7 · €32-35
Ana writes, plays, produces and arranges, and the live band is where all of that comes loose. Bossa and samba sit next to post-punk guitar and funk without any of it reading as costume. One of the people at the center of the Rio scene currently rewriting how much Brazilian pop can hold at once.

🍿 Joshua Oppenheimer: THE END Friday · 9:15 pm · silent green, Gerichtstr. 35 · €6 A musical set in a bunker after the collapse, screened outdoors as part of Lost in Finity.

🔊 MAGMA Festival
Saturday & Sunday · from noon · RSO.Berlin, Schnellerstr. 137 · €50 per day, €107 for both
Second edition, two days, two stages, and a booking that reads like a map of where listening actually is. Saturday runs from the afternoon into the evening with Erika de Casier, Yaeji, Joy Orbison, DJ Python, Six Sex, Skin On Skin, Ata Kak, DJ Travella, and The Dare. MAGMA BY NIGHT then takes the same site through to morning with Blawan, Pearson Sound, Surusinghe, JAXX TMS and Garage Girls. Sunday continues on the same ground.

🛼 LOVEDANCIN' Roller Jam
Sunday · 3 pm · ZIK, Schloßstraße 78-82 · €25
Moodymann playing a roller rink is not a sentence that comes up often. LOVEDANCIN' takes over ZIK and puts skaters and dancers on the same floor, with skates rentable at the door.

🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺

👩‍🏭 Unemployment tops 3 million

🏳️‍🌈 Hamburg Pride returns with message of solidarity after Berlin attack

🚨 Rhine falls to record low levels

🤖 Wagner opera’s AI backdrop meets loud boos at Bayreuth Festival

Factoid

According to the election rules, parties could start hanging up their posters for the September Berlin election at noon on Sunday. Some parties simply ignored the rule and began postering on Saturday. An estimated 250,000 posters are around the city. I’ve noticed something else: companies piggy-backing on the political posters. In my neighbourhood, an ad for a store buying and selling gold has been on lampposts since the weekend. Fun fact, about 10 years ago, when I briefly joined a political party, I volunteered for some poster-hanging work. It was mostly fun, though a few old men passing by chose to hurl an insult or two in my direction.

📫Postkutsche (mail coach)

Reader Naman wrote to us about a hobby coding project.

“I built bahnscanner.de - a free tool that lets you search Deutsche Bahn fares across flexible dates, kind of like Skyscanner but for German trains. You can find the cheapest day to travel over a range, browse a 30-day price calendar, or search round-trip cheapest pairs. I thought it might be a useful thing to mention to your readers. It's free, no sign-up required, and most people living in Berlin are on a train at some point.”

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🔗 🔗 🔗 Useful links 🔗 🔗 🔗

🐄🥓 #515: One street-rave gone, Tech hiring and firing, Attacker's conviction

Andrew Bulkeley — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 11:16:28 GMT

A dozen water buffalo hoped to experience Berlin after escaping from their herd in Wustrower Park in Hohenschönhausen Thursday. The fence was somehow damaged. Photo: Berliner Polizei

Hey 20 Percent!

I’ve been wondering a lot lately if I would have been happier had I accidentally migrated to a different European (or maybe non-European) city.

This Berlin thing was an accident — I took German on a whim in seventh grade and then decided to become an exchange student in eleventh grade because we had moved to Texas and, well, Texas.

I came to Germany as an adult to change up my life and get some experience as a financial journalist to make it easier to get my dream job writing for entertainment rag Variety in Los Angeles.

Then I discovered Berlin on a business trip and could never stop thinking about it until I moved here two years later.

And now I’m even German. Would I be happier if I were, say, Italian now? Finnish? Japanese? Or even working for Variety in LA (I actually wrote some for them in the 00s).

No idea. I just keep thinking about it.

Have a good weekend!

Andrew

Tesla hiring, Zalando firing

The good capitalist lord giveth and taketh away: Tesla in Grünheide southeast of Berlin has hired 1,000 new employees as it ramps up weekly production of its Musk-mobiles to 6,200 from 5,000, according to Tagesspiegel. At the same time, fast-fashion platform Zalando has begun eliminating up to 200 at its Berlin HQ — ironically more than 200 employees volunteered for redundancy because morale is apparently great, according to Handelsblatt. Zalando just happens to also be opening a new office in Romania. 🤔

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💀 Super-creepy plastinator Gunter von Hagens dead

CSD attack impact on events

The Zug der Liebe planned for Aug. 29 on Straße der 17. Juni will move from a street party to a smaller protest rave at Ritter Butzke in Kreuzberg while the Rave the Planet party will go on as planned on Aug. 15, according to RBB24. Zug der Liebe said increased security costs as well as the cancellation of 70% of the trucks needed for the event have made it impossible — it also has yet to win regulary approval. Meanwhile, Rave the Planet said it met with Berlin officials to review its security plans for its ersatz Love Parade. Both cited the CSD attack as factors for their security reviews but came to different conclusions.

The attacker’s priors

CSD attacker Abdul B. had only a single conviction and had been charged as a minor, Berlin prosecutors clarified Wednesday, according to RBB24. Specialists determined Abdul was emotionally stunted and was therefore tried as a minor despite being 20 for his attempt to join the Islamic State terrorist organization in Syria in 2025. He was then sentenced to 22 months. His sentence was reduced to probation because he spent nearly six months in a German jail as well as three months behind bars in Lebanon in connection with the crime. The sentence would have automatically been reduced to probation after six months had he attended counseling and behaved in jail. He had two other run-ins with officials for assault and robbery but they didn’t result in convictions.

🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺

🚗 BMW firing thousands too

🚂 Troubled Deutsche Bahn halts losses

Factoid

The red is Speckgürtel 1, the orange is 2, the gray is just … Brandenburg. Graphic: statistik Berlin Brandenburg

Berlin has created a second Speckgürtel as residents flee deeper into surrounding Brandenburg to escape the rising cost of residential real estate, according to the Berlin-Brandenburg stats nerds. Speckgürtel is the cute German word for spare tire — that extra bit of flab many people acquire around their mid-sections. The first Speckgürtel in Brandenburg around Berlin has about 50 villages and is home to 1 million. The second also has 50 villages but just 240,000 people. The rest of Brandenburg has 1.3 million residents — and some really, really great lakes. Population in the first has risen 14% since 2011 and the second 9.4% while the rest of Brandenburg expanded just 3.4%.

🔗 🔗 🔗 Useful links 🔗 🔗 🔗

🫠 German teacher ill for 17 years fights in court for full salary

#514: CSD tragedy

Maurice Frank — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 10:26:15 GMT

Pboto: Orator, CC BY-SA 4.0

By now you’ve heard about the horrendous attack on the CSD pride march on Saturday night. A van drove into Tiergarten a few hundred metres away from the event’s locus at the Brandenburg Gate. A 65-year-old Polish woman was killed, 29 people were injured, including the deceased woman’s daughter.

An enormous manhunt ensued for the prime suspect, 21-year-old Lebanese-German Abdul Ballout. He appears to have shared Islamic State propaganda and even attempted to join the organisation in Syria, after which he was imprisoned in Lebanon for three months.

Back in Germany, he was given a suspended sentence of 22 months for “preparing a serious violent offence endangering the state”. He pretended to renounce his Islamist beliefs; he even took part in a de-radicalisation programme.

Police traced him to an allotment garden in Spandau, where they shot him dead after he apparently came at officers with a knife.

First and foremost, we must show our solidarity with the victims. That goes without saying.

Beyond that, I am saddened and disgusted by how this deliberate attack at Berlin’s large, strong queer community and its allies is also an attack on everything Berlin stands for: personal freedom, tolerance, political expression without fear, and just partying. One sick young man drunk on a radical Islamist ideology extinguished an innocent life, traumatised many others, and spread fear and insecurity throughout the community and throughout the city.

This crime is the culmination of a massive failure on different levels: the education system, the justice system, the law enforcement system.

This guy isn’t alone. The BKA, a federal law enforcement agency, estimates there are 28,000 people in with Islamist views in Germany; 9,000 are considered “prone to violence”. They believe about 450 people are capable of committing or supporting a terrorist act. The authorities are overwelmed by the number of “potential threats” including potential extreme-rightwing terrorists.

The insane thing is that Ballout himself was classified as a “high-risk threat” and yet was allowed to walk free with a suspended sentence.

This act will lead to a more repressive state. Politicians are, unsurprisingly, talking of expanding AI surveillance programmes, which will prove tricky in this data-protection obsessed country.

This act comes at a time of growing hostility and violence directed at queer people. Gay men have been assaulted at cruising spots by groups of young men; queer people have been harrassed and robbed on fake Grindr dates.

Meanwhile, Neukölln’s Commissioner for Integration Güner Balci said in an interview that homophobia is openly preached in some reactionary mosques and a massive problem among children and young people in her district. Balci said she wouldn’t be surprised if Ballout had grown up in such an environment. She called for the state to take much more drastic action against homophobia while warning against placing Muslims under general suspicion.

Solving this problem is a Herculean task. Berlin and Germany need to devote massive resources and get real about combatting the extremism infecting young people — whether it’s coming from Islamists or neo-Nazis, birds of a feather, it would seem.

Maurice

Events this week, curated by The Next Day Berlin

Internet Cinema selected by Dana Dawud
30.07 · 8–10pm · Julia Stoschek Foundation, Leipziger Straße 60 · free admission
Palestinian artist Dana Dawud built Open Secret, her touring internet cinema series, out of screenings with online collaborators in nine cities. She treats CoreCore, deep fakes and phone footage as cinema worth watching together.

Bwa Kayiman: Crossing the Mangrove
01–02.08 · from midday · HKW, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10 · free entry, Garifuna Collective concert €20-24
Fourth chapter of HKW's study of the Haitian Revolution's legacy, this year turning to mangroves as sites of ecological knowledge. Ritual, dance and talks run from Camilo Mejía Cortés's salsa rooted VAIVÉN to a rare Berlin set from Garifuna Collective, closing with Three Thousand Songs Records.

Book Presentation and Performance
30.07 · 7pm · Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Kottbusser Straße 10 · free entry
Closing weekend for the six artist residency show at Bethanien. Ruti de Vries and Tracey Snelling present new books at 7pm, followed by a performance from Noé Duboutay and Caroline Beach. Snelling builds miniature rooms from sociology and voyeurism, part stage set, part crime scene.

Festival Entre Trópicos
01.08 · 1pm–12am · Neue Zukunft, Alt-Stralau 68 · €15-35
Two stages of sound. Desenfreno Tropical runs cumbia through avant-garde jazz and psych rock, closer to ritual than party band. Mercedes & Marxx bring fuzzed post-punk built on Latin American post-pop. Los Baby Jaguars swing cumbia into boogaloo and Afrobeat. Las Migrañas play hypnotic, ritual synth.

Mille et Une Nuits
31.07 · 7pm · Radialsystem, Holzmarktstraße 33 · €18, reduced €14
Iranian choreographer Sorour Darabi's first opera reimagines One Thousand and One Nights from Scheherazade's own point of view, freeing her from the storytelling device the original male author reduced her to. Eight performers build a queer, immersive night through live music and song.

🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺

📉 Germany news: Industry hemorrhaging 15,000 jobs a month

⚽ Klopp threatens to quit Germany job

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