#405: Rave the Planet, Digital Naturalizations, Did the cops lie?
You're right -- there are lots of empty offices
Hey 20 Percent!
Rave the Planet starts Saturday at 2pm on Strasse der 17. Juni. It’s just the Love Parade in new clothes (if you know what that was). The public rave felt like a city-wide festival when I first moved here and was one of the reasons I decided to relocate. Berlin’s good at public parties (and protests with party components).
Speaking of public parties — our first-ever summer party is Thursday at Berliner Berg brewery. We’re throwing it together with event newsletter The Next Day Berlin and will record our podcast live. Lots of you have already bought tickets. Even more still can!
See you there.
Andrew
Shut up, Kai
We can have parties but the reason we can’t have more digital things is because of the people at the top: Mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) and federal interior minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) both told tabloid Bild that they were skeptical the 100% digital naturalization process in Berlin was a good, secure idea. Applicants, they say, should have to appear for an interview to prove they really, really, really want to be German. Never mind all the paperwork we have to do. Quatsch, the Landesamt für Einwanderung (the Ausländerbehörde) told Tagesspiegel. The process, introduced last year, is even more secure than the more paper-laden processes in other German states because documents can be more quickly compared and contact with other state authorities is simpler (duh). Our city-state last year naturalized about 20,000 immigrants, up from 9,000 a year earlier, and is on target for 40,000(!) this year.
Public parties good. Public transport bad.
You know how you ride the subway and think, this couldn’t get any worse? Yes, it can. Three of the four lines running through Nollendorfplatz will be forced to skip the stop starting in January until April as public transport authority BVG renovates the station’s crumbling cement and steel roof, according to Tagesspiegel (paywall). The work had been planned for 2029. Truncated U1s will bounce between Wittenbergplatz and Uhlandstraße as well as Gleisdreieck and Warschauer Straße, though the Warschauer Straße route may not happen because the trains would have no access to a workshop. The U4 will not run and the U3 will bounce between Krumme Lanke and Spichernstraße. The above-ground U2 will remain untouched. Luckily, I have 99 problems but Nolle ain’t one.
More honesty, less hyperbole
A Berlin police officer may have caused his own injuries during a tumultuous pro-Palestine Nakba protest May 15, according to Süddeutsche Zeitung and NDR. Berlin police claimed the officer, dubbed 24111, was pulled into a crowd of protestors and then beaten, leaving him with a broken right hand and bruises on his spine. But videos instead show a group of officers, including 24111, forcing themselves into the protest to arrest someone. Another officer pushes a protestor onto 24111, who then begins swinging wildly, possibly breaking his own hand. 24111 can also be seen throwing punches at protestors earlier in the day. The videos are available and carefully analyzed in the SZ article — the level of violence from both sides is shocking and unnecessary.
Enjoy your temporary employment scientists!
While we may be good at parties, Germany’s constitutional court says Berlin’s bad at lawmaking. The court again overturned a law from Berlin’s previous red-red-green government saying the coalition overstepped its bounds. Berlin was wrong to require local universities to offer highly qualified scientists permanent staff positions rather than temporary spots — only 7% of the prospective profs were getting tenure, according to taz. Humboldt Uni challenged the law, saying it robbed them of flexibility, and the court said employment law is the federal government’s domain, not a state’s. The court also overtuned the same government’s controversial Mietendeckel rent cap in 2021 using the same reason — the federal government already had rent protections, negating the need for local regulation. The red-red-green coalition included the environmental Greens, leftists Die Linke and the center-left SPD.
🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺
🏛️ The Bundestag was spicy this week
🚀 Germany will get Ukraine some Patriots
Factoid
Berlin has 1.75 million square meters of empty office space, up 42% from last year, as businesses looked to save cash (and we tried to spend as little time in the office as possible), according to a study by German Property Partners. Only Munich has more unused commercial real estate — 2 million square meters. Sounds like at least some could become apartments, especially considering the real estate consultancy said commerical rents in Berlin fell 8% last year — wish we could say the same about residential rents.
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You watched those videos of the police wading into a crowd of protestors, punching them and throwing them to the ground, and your takeaway was the the violence “on both sides” was shocking?? Really? You don’t think there might be an inherent power imbalance to waves of police trying to break the lines of protestors standing stationary in place? Did we watch the same videos?