Dear 20 Percent,
As you probably all know by now, the left-wing party Die Linke won the Sunday election with their lead candidate Elif Eralp, who could become the first mayor with a Turkish background. It’s also the first time Die Linke has won in Berlin. Eralp’s campaign was focused on cost-of-living and the housing crisis, which Die Linke hope to address with rent caps on state-owned flats, a “rent police” office to enforce existing rules and socialisation (aka expropriation) of housing owned by large companies (I wrote about this in my other newsletter).
All established parties lost votes. The AfD grew its support, but not as much as polls had suggested. It did disturbingly well in the northeast of the city, where it got over 50% in many districts.
The interesting part begins now: Will Die Linke form a progressive city government with Die Grünen (Greens) and SPD? The Greens have signalled their willingness but the SPD isn’t so thrilled about the prospect. While the Greens support socialisation of housing, the SPD is lukewarm at best. Die Linke might have to compromise on one of their key demands if they want to run the city. The alternative would be a CDU-Green-SPD government, probably not a great idea after such a big CDU loss.
The negotiations will take weeks. We’ll keep you updated.
More news below.
Maurice
🍸 Shout out to our friends at Handpicked Berlin and Berlin Events Weekly. They’re doing their Autumn Get-Together at Impact Hub on October 2, so get your tickets now. Should be fun!
Greens lose big in former stronghold
Kreuzberg has been a bastion of the ecologist Greens pretty much since they came on the scene in the 1980s. This election, voters in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, for the first time ever, swung massively from Die Grünen to Die Linke. In the state parliament election, the Green share of the vote fell to 20.7% (down from 33.5% in the last election) while support for the left-wing party doubled to 40.5%.
Neukölln Linke w/ organised crime?
Issa Remmo, the head of the Remmo crime family, didn’t do Die Linke a favour by showing up at a Linke victory celebration on Sunday. Remmo told Morgenpost he felt “supported” by Die Linke. A party spokesperson said he hadn’t been invited and was asked to leave. That should have been the end of it but then Issa’s son Ferat posted some chats he had exchanged earlier this year with Ferat Koçak, who represents Neukölln in the Bundestag. Koçak said he didn’t know whom he was chatting with, though he wrote “Give my respectful greeting to your father,” meaning Issa Remmo. Koçak apologised on Instagram: “This has unsettled the public. And rightly so: There is no justification whatsoever for elected officials to have ties to individuals associated with organized crime.” The Remmos were responsible for a number of spectacular robberies like the 2017 heist of a 100kg gold coin from the Bode Museum.
Express-approval of controversial high-rise?
Tagesspiegel (€) reports that the outgoing CDU-SPD Senat (the confusing name of the city government) is striving to give the go-ahead to a new 167m residential tower near Warschauer Straße despite local opposition. The tower would contain 1,060 flats, a third of which would be social housing. The Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg council opposes the project because the neighbourhood lacks social infrastructure so the central department for urban planning took over responsibility for the project against the district’s will. Outgoing finance minister Stefan Evers, the CDU candidate in the election, is pulling all the strings he can to get the project approved, according to taz. Project developer Atrium Development donated €20,000 to the CDU in 2023.
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Protest against job losses
About 1,500 autoworkers in and around Berlin protested on Monday against job cuts in the struggling car industry. German carmakers are struggling thanks to competition from Chinese brands and the trend towards electric vehicles. The industry employs 30,000 in the region at Mercedes, BMW and Tesla plants as well as dozens of smaller suppliers.
🎭 Events this week, curated by The Next Day Berlin 🪩
Maya Ongaku [live]
Wednesday 23.09 · 7:30 - 11 pm · Gretchen, Obentrautstraße 19-21, Kreuzberg · €25
Three musicians from Enoshima who blur jazz, psychedelia, and ambient into one drifting thing, closer to spontaneous generation than to songs. Their new album, Nothing Space Music, is warm and unhurried.
Campus Concert: Georgia [concert]
Thursday · 7–9.15 pm · James-Simon-Galerie, Museum Island, Mitte · €11–22
Young players from Tbilisi and Germany on Museum Island, Beethoven beside Georgian music you rarely hear, and a premiere by Tsotne Zedginidze, 17 and one to watch. A panel first on art in Georgia now.
Foraging Frohnau Walk [gather/food]
Friday · 1–5 pm · meeting point Frohnau S-Bahn (S1) · €35, dinner (from 7 pm) €30 · in English
This is for anyone who’s found the city too loud lately. Composer Gabriel Francisco Lemos walks the Frohnau forest in long silent stretches, following sound as much as mushrooms. The group gathers what they find and shares it over dinner under the trees after the forage.
Atelierhaus Mengerzeile: open studios [gather/look]
Saturday · 2–7 pm studios, 11 am–6 pm m3 · Mengerzeile 1-3, Treptow · free
The easiest way to meet artists without the gallery-opening nerves. Forty studios are open, Nanne Meyer, Haleh Redjaian and Juliane Henrich among them, with the Spanish group show “And Then, I Woke Up” at Kunstraum m3. Coffee and cake by day, a bonfire once it gets dark.
Taste of Africa [gather/food]
Saturday & Sunday · 12–10 pm · Factory Berlin, Rheinsberger Str. 76/77, Mitte · €3, kids free
Two days of African cooking across the Factory grounds, afrobeats and amapiano on the soundsystem, a fashion and art market, drum workshops, and a kids’ corner.
For a weekly selection of art, music, food and other things worth leaving the house for, subscribe to The Next Day Berlin.
from our partneŕ
Spent too much this summer?
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🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺
👴 Merz calls state election a ‘disaster’ for his party but vows to stay on
👴 Merz’s dilemma: Redraft German economic reforms, or go down defending them
📺 Why Germany’s political centre is losing ground
🎙️ Rise of the far right in Germany: how worried should we be?
Factoid
The next government will have to make some hard choices and contend with the fact that Berlin is broke. The budget deficit for this year is €4.6 billion and is set to grow to €6.3 billion in 2027.
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Thanks for the shout-out
"The next government will have to make some hard choices and contend with the fact that Berlin is broke."
Genuine question: What does being broke mean for a city really? I am not an economist or accountant but just having a budget deficit does not mean a city is "broke", does it? I read the article you linked to and there are ways the new Senat could raise revenues...