🎂💶 #511: Linke mayor?, Tesla profitable, Delivery Hero sold

Our Ringbahn turns 155 today!

Jul 17, 2026

An oldie but a goodie at Westhafen. Photo: Ingolf via CC2.0.

Hey 20 Percent!

Mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) last week said he wouldn’t run in September’s election and it looked like he would need to resign as well for doing a very bad job as our mayor — but he oddly didn’t.

A professor at a local private college may know why.

Had Wegner resigned, he would have had to forego Übergangsgeld, or transition funds. It’s a bizarre form of unemployment funds that political mucky mucks get for up to two years when they leave office. Apparently to help them get back to non-political life.

Wegner, it seems, stands to reel in €235,763 in Übergangsgeld for doing a very bad job as our mayor. The figure is based on his monthly salary of €17,463 for doing a very bad job as our mayor. You don’t get the money if you quit.

I should have become a German politician.

More political dealings below.

Have a good CSD/pride weekend — though it’s supposed to be stormy with hail today. Be careful!

Andrew

CDU doing better, AfD worse

Everyone really hated Wegner — the CDU gained three percentage points in the latest poll following his resignation, jumping to 20% and becoming Berlins No. 2 party behind leftists Die Linke, who also gained 2 percentage points to 22%, according to RBB24. Both the environmentalist Die Grüne and rightwingers AfD lost two percentage points (to 17% and 16%, respectively), making them the third- and fourth-most popular parties in the Hauptstadt. The Sonntagsfrage (Sunday poll) asks participants how they would have voted if elections were Sunday. It now looks very likely that Elif Eralp will become the first-ever Die Linke mayor in Berlin.

F*ck corporate landlords

Oh, are we talking about polls? A majority of Berliners would still like to force corporate landlords to sell a significant portion of their residential portfolios to the state, according to a study that was commissioned by corporate landord Vonovia, Tagesspiegel says. The February poll showed 24% of respondents supported the move while 32% were leaning toward supporting such a measure. 59.1% of voters approved a referendum in 2021 asking politicians to pass a law what would limit corporate landlords to just 3,000 flats and force them to sell the excess to Berlin. The initiative was named after landlord Deutsche Wohnen, which is now Vonovia. Local politicians have dragged their feet on the law and the German government is now working on a law to forbid the practice of nationalization and circumvent the referendum.

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Lieferheld will become Uber

The joke in Germany for decades has been that no one in Berlin actually works (I’ve made it myself). That myth must finally be dead considering all the high-priced acquisitions of Berlin startups. Ride-sharing giant Uber Thursday said it wanted to buy Delivery Hero in a deal that values the Berlin food delivery start up at €12.7 billion, according to Handelsblatt. That’s about twice what the company was worth in April when Uber first bought a significant piece of the company, signalling its interest. I love an ironic twist and ironically the purchase will bring Delivery Hero back to the German market — it’s based on Oranienburger Straße in Mitte but abandoned the German market in 2022. But Uber Eats, we all know too well, has a strong foothold here. If you work at Delivery Hero, maybe update your LinkedIn/resume.

Senior citizen charged as serial rapist

A 68-year-old Berlin man was charged Tuesday with 22 charges or rape after allegedy drugging and assaulting at least 14 women and video taping the attacks, according to Tagesspiegel. The suspect has been in protective custody since March and investigators say he may have assaulted more than 50 women. Investigators began looking at the man after they found chats with him on the phone of a deceased convicted rapist in western Germany.

Tesla blinging

Those of us wishing pest & cholera on the Tesla factory southeast of Berlin in Grünheide are fighting a rhetorical uphill battle — the plant last year made €77.1 million in profit, up from €56.8 million in 2024, on €7.1 billion in sales, according to Tagesspiegel. It paid €610 million in salaries and is the biggest single employer in Brandenburg. The sales are all internal — it sells its wares to Tesla Motors Netherlands in Amsterdam.

🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺

🪖 Conscientious objection up.

💩 Trans neo-Nazi sent to men’s prison

Factoid

Berlin’s aorta, its most important subway line, our lifeblood, the Ringbahn took its first trip on this day in 1871 — from Moabit to Schöneberg. The complete ring wasn’t complete until six years later. The Berlin Wall disrupted the 37-km Ringbahn in 1961 and it wasn’t fully restored until 2002. Happy birthday Ringbahn!

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