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Berlin teachers are fighting for all of us

Today and tomorrow, educators are on strike. Why have there been so many strikes recently? A guide to the alphabet soup of union struggles in Germany


06/12/2023

What’s been going on with Berlin’s teachers this year? Today and tomorrow, thousands of them are on strike. For my friend Bob, this means his kids stay home and stare at their screens while he tries to work. Not a good system, but he can’t afford a babysitter for 20 euros an hour. Other families have been commandeering grandparents, but that’s not an option for many immigrants.

In his gut, Bob knows that these strikes are for a good cause, but the teachers’ union has not done enough to explain what they want, much less for non-German speakers (they provided a short letter in different languages as a PDF). For all you lefty parents out there, here is a guide to the alphabet soup of union struggles in Germany.

Today, thousands of teachers were on the streets demanding a raise. They are part of a huge union contract called TV-L that covers 2.5 million employees of Germany’s federal states. Every two years, give or take, both sides negotiate a new TV-L, accompanied by huge one-day strikes. This is usually a boring ritual, but Germany has seen the highest inflation for 50 years, so this year has been unusually spicy.

The main unions behind TV-L – the GEW (education workers) and Verdi (service workers) – are demanding raises of 10.5 percent, with at least 500 euros more for everyone. The current strikes include not just teachers, but also workers at day care centers, universities, hospitals, government agencies and much more.

But Berlin teachers were striking before TV-L, too. They want a separate contract called TV-G to protect their occupational health. Teachers’ jobs are making them sick, so they are demanding smaller classes. The GEW wants a maximum of 19 students in primary schools and 24 students in high schools (they are proposing a complicated table). As »nd« reported, the GEW Berlin called their members out to 17 additional strike days in the last two years.

In contrast to the United States, teachers in Germany make more than starvation wages. But the workload is impossible. High-school teachers are expected to give 26 hours of classes per week. With grading, preparation, meetings and a million other responsibilities, that adds up to over 50 and sometimes over 60 hours. Thousands of teachers work »part-time« (still more than 40 hours). Thousands suffer from burnout or other chronic illnesses.

Due to the shortage of teachers (and even a shortage of university students training to become teachers), classes get overstuffed or canceled. This is part of a general crisis of German schools. As the international PISA study just showed, German students are doing worse than ever. Berlin’s school buildings are crumbling, and at least 200 of them are full of asbestos. Some students try to avoid the bathrooms all day, as they haven’t been renovated since the 1950s.

As Inés Haider, a social worker at a Neukölln school explained to me, this is not about »lazy teachers« looking to put their feet up. When there are 30 or more young people in a classroom, »the students who most need help simply can’t get it.« Teachers want to do their jobs, but they’re not being allowed to. The union knows that there is no magic wand that will create thousands of qualified educators – but the government could at least commit to a plan to address the crisis.

Berlin’s teachers are striking for their colleagues across the public sector, many of whom earn far less. As Ryan Plocher, an American teaching in Neukölln, explained it to me: »Education needs a lot more than teachers. We need staff in the offices, people cleaning the buildings, social workers in the local government – and they all need to be paid fairly!«

Above all, teachers are striking for better education for everyone. Bob points out: »If you added up all the missed work and all the pay to babysitters, then it would be cheaper to just pay teachers what they deserve.« Amen. That’s why it’s a shame that the GEW hasn’t been mobilizing parents and students to join the strikes. Bob and I and lots of other parents would like to show our solidarity!

This is a mirror of Nathaniel’s Red Flag column which appears in Neues Deutschland

Meat is Murder

Sushi, Such is Life, and Sunflower Seeds


Shoes on the Danube Bank is a sculpture of 60 shoes made of iron, glued to the bank of the Danube River to commemorate the Jews of Budapest who were murdered during World War II. Walking by this memorial in the Hungarian capital, the absent bodies haunt you. Standing on the river’s bank among shadows of death, you cannot but visualize and live this scene when Jewish people were asked to take off their shoes before they were shot dead and fell into the cold waters. Sandals, boots, all different styles of shoes and sizes are a reminder that nobody was spared the brutality of the government’s Arrow Cross militias. It is also a stirring reflection of barbarity, and how humanity can be so animalistic. In the evening, the shoes disappear, drowned out by the brighter lights from the national parliament building across the river. A few passers-by commemorate the dead. They deconstruct the significance of the shoes by filling them with roses, turning shoes into flower vases.

On October 8, 2023, I visited the largest Jewish museum in Europe, the Jewish Museum Berlin. Across the street, you can see the W. Michael Blumenthal Academy. The Jewish Museum Berlin exhibits Jewish history from the Middle Ages to the present day through library collections, archives and drawings, among other documentation. Plenty of pictures of the mighty founder of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl, punctuate the halls of the museum. He stares at me. I am irritated. I am pleased, however, that entry to the museum is free. It is highly priced and paid for by German responsibility. German-Jewish history takes up – quite rightly – large parts of the site, composed of three buildings, covering some 3,500 square meters not far from Checkpoint Charlie. Inside the museum, one particular installation stands out.

In the installation, 10,000 faces made of steel are piled in a broad corridor. All the faces show, right below the nose, a carved-out and circular, open mouth to signify the faces’ cries and discomfort. Israeli artist Menashe Kadishman called the installation Shalekhet, which means “fallen leaves.” The installation is the only “empty” space in this part of the museum where visitors can enter and walk through. It is an interactive space where you are allowed to tread on the faces of victims of war, listening to the metal pieces as they clink and rattle against one another. The resounding echoes within these lofty grey walls are terrifying. This scene as well, again, is haunting.

In 2010, I visited the Tate Modern art gallery in London, where I saw an art installation called Kui Hua Zi or Sunflower Seeds by contemporary artist and political activist Ai Weiwei. The work consisted of 100,000,000 individually hand-crafted porcelain sunflower seeds, which filled the gallery’s 1,000 square-meter hall. The art installation weighs 150 tons, was hand-painted and fired at 1,300 degrees Centigrade, and required more than 1,600 workers to complete it over the span of two and a half years in China before it was exhibited in London. Visitors were initially allowed to interact, walk across, lay down and play with the sunflower seeds before the museum feared that dust from the installation could be harmful; they decided to fence off the exhibit afterward. I was one of the lucky ones who visited early and thus I took part. I was tempted to sneak one seed into my pocket, but I felt guilty so I put it back. Sunflower Seeds represents and symbolizes the vastness of China. On the one hand, an individual seed is instantly lost among millions, symbolizing the conformity and censorship of the Chinese Communist Party. On the other hand, the combination of all the seeds represents the unity of the people to stand up and overthrow any political party.

In 2011, Ai Weiwei was sentenced to 13 years in prison for subversion of state power, but was released 81 days later and handed a $2.4 million fine for tax evasion. His passport was confiscated, and he was placed under house arrest for four years. When his passport was returned to him, he left for Germany where he was offered a professorship at Berlin University of the Arts. In an interview published in The Guardian in 2020, Ai Weiwei explains why he quit Germany for Britain, calling the country “intolerant,” as well as “bigoted and authoritarian.” Ai Weiwei in the interview compares Germany to Britain, another colonial power. “In Britain,” he says, “they are colonial. They are polite at least. But in Germany, they don’t have this politeness. They would say in Germany you have to speak German. They have been very rude in daily situations.” He mentions he was thrown out of taxis on three different occasions in Berlin. “They deeply don’t like foreigners,” he adds. Ai Weiwei here is like a Nazi German officer: he does not spare anyone any harsh criticism. He mentions demonstrations in 2018 in which thousands of right-wing extremists on the streets of Chemnitz, a town in eastern Germany, were shouting “Foreigners Out.” “Ai believes,” writes The Guardian, “the country [Germany] has become indifferent to the suffering of others, both within Germany and outside.”

Fast-forward: it is November 16, 2023, and Ai Weiwei’s new exhibition in London is cancelled based on allegedly “antisemitic tweets” in which he defended Palestinians and their right of self-determination. Other exhibitions in New York, Berlin and Paris have also been cancelled. Ai moves to Lisbon, where he has started building a copy of his demolished studio in China. “Planning permission wasn’t easy,” he tells his interviewer. With a conspiratorial smile, he explains: “When they asked me what I was going to put in it, I said sunflower seeds.” Ai Weiwei visited Gaza in 2016 where he filmed parts of Human Flow, a German documentary he directed and co-produced on the impact of human migration and internal displacement. Israeli authorities had initially refused to let him in, claiming that the Gaza visit could pose a threat to his life.

II

On October 7, 2023, I went to have dinner on Sonnenallee in Neukölln. On the street, German police were asking people for identification, clearing out crowds of Palestinians and making sure people were not handing out stickers of Palestinian flags or chanting the words, “Free Palestine.” This reminded me of a scene from the infamous German movie of 1999, Sonnenallee, where a border checkpoint was still in operation for a few months and at which East Berliners still had to show their identity documents, to be stamped by the German Democratic Republic border authorities. A few Palestinian youngsters were celebrating at Hermannplatz earlier in the day, handing out baklava and other sweets in the middle of Berlin. This was their way of celebrating the revival of Palestinian resistance which has been diminished for many years in Palestine, because of the complicity of the Palestinian Authority with Israel, as well as outside Palestine, due to the oblivious international community and its absent application of regulations, humanitarian laws and protocols as set by the Geneva Conventions.

Lest we forget, these youngsters are exiled children and grandchildren who are the direct descendants of the 1948 Palestinian Nakba/Catastrophe and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. They will cheer for any reason that provides them with hope to return to their homeland and/or feel “at home.” “Home,” writes Nagib Mahfouz, an Egyptian writer and Nobel Prize winner, “is not the place where you are born. It is the place where all your attempts to escape cease.” Perhaps Germany will be such a place, one day. Today, however, this is not only hindered by German policies but also by fellow exiles in Berlin. In a Tagesspiegel article written by a Turk (whose name was anonymised by the editors), Arabs who live and work on Sonnenallee are seen as more “aggressive” and “less cultured than Turkish people.” This is why, claims the article, Arabs are not able to integrate into German society, are always in trouble and live constantly on the margins.

Once you arrive at what is known as the “Street of Arabs” in Berlin, Die Arabische Straße, you are greeted by a street sign hanging on an electric pole: Sonnenallee (Sun Avenue, or Sunny Road, or perhaps Sun Alley). The sign is underlined with a colorful sticker that reads: Free Palestine. You walk these lively streets while ghosts of Palestinian detainees, prisoners and martyrs haunt you, looking at you from every poster tacked up on neighborhood walls. The street is punctuated with sounds of Arabic dialects, the poetic lines of graffiti sprayed left and right and signs in Arabic, German and Turkish, the fragrance of frying oil and tobacco. Here you see and smell and hear Palestinian memorabilia, Syrian desserts and clothing stores, Turkish döner and baklava, Iraqi spices, Lebanese pastries, Kurdish and Egyptian music. It is loud and chaotic on Sonnenallee, compared to other parts of Berlin. Such is life.

Sonnenallee is a space that allows for cultural translation and healthy dialogue. I see German hipsters in this area with their Arab and Turkish friends. It is a refreshing sight. You could not tell that this was a street established in the nineteenth century, called in 1938 Braunauer Straße after the birthplace of Adolf Hitler, and once divided by the Berlin Wall. It was a border crossing between East and West Germany, before reunification and the fall of the Soviet Union. Today, Sonnenallee deconstructs and frees this street from its colonial context, expands its borders culturally, challenges the parameters of its society, and offers spaces for political revision. Integration with German culture and society, however, by Arabs generally and Palestinian youths particularly, will always be problematic. Integration will always be challenged and ultimately result in mere assimilation, if at all, because the 10 percent of inhabitants of Sonnenallee who have an Arab background have seen and witnessed how Germany keeps supporting the killings of their brothers and sisters and the ongoing Israeli settler-colonization in Palestine. On October 12, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said that two-armed Heron combat drones, leased by the German military, as well as shipments of German ammunition, have been deployed for use by Israeli forces. Millions of euros were given in November 2023 to further aid the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Over a billion and a half euros are paid in compensation for Holocaust survivors. “There is only one place for Germany,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in a speech to lawmakers, “that place is Israel’s side.” A few days later, Scholz’s face outshined the otherwise dull red cover of German magazine Der Spiegel. The caption: Wir müssen endlich im großen Stil abschieben, “We finally have to deport people on a large scale” (October 20, 2023).

Before the start of Russia’s war with Ukraine in 2022, it had been Germany’s longstanding official policy not to supply arms to conflict zones. Despite Berlin’s commitment to rethinking its security and foreign policy, opposition to German military entanglement in overseas conflicts still runs deep in German society. Palestinian protestors on the streets today affirm their national identity as a defensive mechanism in the face of Western capitalism, colonialism and materialism overseas. They are seen bemoaning racism, dreaming of assimilation, haunted by nostalgic dreams, waiting for a physical return, idealizing a national image, instinctively identifying with and focusing on the natal and inherited as opposed to the forced and required. Despite speaking the German language and receiving generous state funding, Palestinians in Germany always feel pushed to the margins. This feeling varies, of course, from one generation to another. This is however the ambience under the sun of this “multicultural” avenue in Neukölln. It is intensely heated. Physical and financial accommodation will not necessarily house these refugees culturally or mentally, because Germany’s political stance will always jeopardize such dynamics.

Sonnenallee is as German as DHL, and DHL is not authentically German. It is originally an U.S. American company. The letter D in DHL does not stand for Deutschland, either. DHL was founded in 1969 in San Francisco by Adrian Dalsey, Larry Hillblom, and Robert Lynn, the DHL formed from the first letters of the founder’s family names. Most Germans will tell you otherwise, because they do not factually know. Germans say this, however, because they have been told the D stands for Deutschland, and this has been cemented as part of the country’s global reputation and cultural foundation since the German postal services, Deutsche Post AG, was privatized. Some Germans too will employ similar logic to rationalize the statement that Palestinians are terrorists, even though they do not factually know this. It is, however, a perceived fact sponsored by, and shared with, the United States and its complicit mass media.

According to the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, “German food culture is changing. The number of vegans is growing, and more than half of the population wants to reduce meat consumption, considering themselves flexitarian. This makes Germany one of the most important markets for plant-based food worldwide with good opportunities for U.S. exporters.”

Given this, I expect more sympathy and empathy from Germany towards “human animals” to be saved. It is meant to be ironic – given the ridiculous support Germany provides to Israel and the vegan selections and choice it makes available for its people.

Palestinians have been a main target of racial prejudice in Germany in recent days, burdened by unjust political decisions restricting their mobility and freedom of speech. They have also been subjected to heavy surveillance and police patrols. Sonnenallee was a border crossing for Berliners during the city’s years of division. A monument by artist Heike Ponwitz offers a reminder of state surveillance in the former border area. The piece is called “Crossing Over: Proximity and Distance,” and includes two pairs of telescopes. Looking through them, the word Übergang (Crossing Over) disrupts the view, as it is overlaid across the landscape beyond the lens. Today we are witnessing similar disruptions which silence only Palestinians, and distort the German sociopolitical space.

On October 11, 2023, a protest in support of Palestinian liberation was banned in Berlin. This was followed by a ban on displaying the Palestinian flag and the verbalization of the words “Free Palestine” in public spaces. Dozens of peaceful protestors who arrived despite the ban were kettled by police and lined up for criminal processing, with mugshots taken in public on Hermannplatz, in the neighborhood of Neukölln. The following day, an anti-colonial protest to mark Indigenous Peoples’ Day that took place outside the German Foreign Office in Berlin welcomed the presence of Palestinian voices, alongside those from Guatemala and Aotearoa. The rally was interrupted with violence multiple times by the Berlin police. Police intimidated and arrested anyone who said out loud, “Free Palestine,” during the peaceful gathering. On October 15, a pro-Palestinian rally was authorized at Potsdamer Platz, only to be subsequently banned minutes before it began, with police intimidating and aggressively handling participants before arrests. On October 16, Berlin’s department of education granted school administrations the authority to police students and ban Palestinian symbols such as Palestinian flags and Palestinian scarves, called kuffiyeh. Throughout this period, police in Berlin have been actively patrolling, intimidating and arresting Arabic speakers in Neukölln around Sonnenallee, a predominantly migrant neighborhood in a city that is home to one of the biggest Palestinian communities in Europe.

I have read testimonies and have watched videos that have documented multiple instances of intimidation, targeted insults and threats of dismissal for anyone who expresses their support for the Palestinian people. The Mainz German Football Club, for example, has dismissed and terminated the contract of a Arab Moroccan player, Anwar El Ghazi, for posting on Instagram calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza.

The selective criminalization of Palestinians, Palestinian voices and Palestinian national symbols is not humane. This selective proscription of people who support the Palestinian cause and who practice their right to peacefully exercise anti-colonial resistance is not fair. The internationally complicit silence over Palestinian suppression is unacceptable. The Palestinian flag, the Palestinian kuffiyeh and the words, “Free Palestine,” are all constituent elements of a cultural identity and a nonviolent means of resistance, to colonialism and ethnic cleansing.

III

I have written essays about literary holocausts and about the dangers of censorship. I also have written about the failure of multiculturalism in Europe, the politics of identity, the myth of the “clash of civilizations,” the dangers of nationalism, xenophobia and racism, and the poetics and problematics of immigration and displacement. I have discussed Berlin’s troublesome locus in challenging the arts-funding status quo, to maintain its status as Europe’s self-proclaimed “art capital.” All these issues came together when The Arab Publishers’ Association in Egypt and The Sharjah Book Affair in the United Arab Emirates decided to withdraw their participation from the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany – a fair which aims to highlight the role of culture and books in encouraging dialogue and understanding between peoples. This was in in response to a statement by the director of the Frankfurt Book Fair in October in support of Israel, and the decision by the fair’s management to withdraw an award for Palestinian author Adania Shibli for her novel, Minor Detail, which was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021. The novel depicts the life of a Palestinian woman who was raped by Israeli soldiers in 1949, and addresses the violence, memory and suffering of Palestinians. German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported that the award organizers cancelled the event at the last minute.

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek raised pivotal questions and points during a speech at the book fair, as well as in interviews afterward. He highlights an idea I have always shared: that the Jewish diaspora has significantly contributed to the establishment of our civilization and of cultural modernity. This diaspora has also contributed to many intellectual and spiritual achievements which simply could not have happened in a narrow, tribal society like that of ancient Judaea. Examples of individuals from this fruitful Jewish diaspora can be found in Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka, Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso, among many other names. You can also find caricatures and gigantic stickers of these figures and more all over the walls of the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Zizek in his comments stresses that Zionist Israelis are using the Holocaust to justify their actions today. He makes sure to clarify, however, that the criticism of Israeli politics is not antisemitic. I wonder: how can quoting Israeli and Jewish writers and artists who are against Zionist ideals, such as political scientist Ilan Pappé and physician and author Gabor Maté, for example, be antisemitic?

Antisemitism is becoming the new Nazism. Antisemitism is a European problem, generated over thousands of years of White Christians marginalizing and murdering Jewish people until these communities were pushed toward the Middle East. Explanations of the sociopolitical and historical conditions which led to the horrors of October 7, 2023, as well as in November 1947 are not antisemitic, because the contextualizing of an event does not mean the justification of an event. Such problems did not start on October 7. They started in 1896, with the establishment of the Zionist movement and the subsequent Palestinian Nakba/Catastrophe in May 1948.

This is not a war or conflict between Hamas and Israel, it is between Israel and Palestine. This conflict is not between Jews and Arabs, but between the United States and its interests in the Middle East. Hamas is not a terrorist group. It is a resisting group. I condemn Hamas but I also understand why it has become the world’s enemy; simply because people have been blocked from hearing their story. I am not a big fan of Hamas, nor of religion for that matter. Hamas, however, is only 36 years old and did recognize Israel as a state. Israel did not reciprocate. Instead, it has kept 2.3 million people locked up in a 360 kilometers strip of land for 15 years. Imagine being locked up in your house for 15 years. Society could not handle quarantine during Covid for two weeks. In fact, Israel admitted funding Hamas in the past to widen the gap between Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank, so that Israel maintains control over both.

Zizek invokes an important saying: “An enemy,” he says, “is someone whose story you have not heard.” He stresses in his speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair that society must provide a narrative with equal representation for both sides. He invites the audience to mention the word “Palestine” in their description of the war between “Israel and Hamas,” because there are always two sides to any story. He highlights the importance of recognizing the massive despair that could give birth to such evil acts. Zizek was mostly booed off the stage in Frankfurt, while a few hands were clapping. In an interview on November 2 after the fair, Zizek said he sees in Germany a state that tries to compensate and pay for what it did to the Jewish people during World War II by supporting the state of Israel’s murderous deeds at the expense of Palestinian lives. He offered a hypothetical suggestion: If Germany has a historic responsibility to protect the Jewish homeland in atonement for its Nazism, and if Germany feels so guilty about killing six million Jewish people, why didn’t Germany grant the Jewish people a state in Hamburg, for example?

“Why was a Jewish state established in Palestine?”I have heard an answer to this question before. It would be: because it has been written in the Torah. Whether a book written thousands of years ago can be considered a legitimate justification for war and displacement, I will not address here. However, and by the same token, does not the Torah also say: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man”? Israel’s Channel 14 keeps an updated count on its official website (accessed at 21:07 on November 16, 2023) of the number of “eliminated terrorists,” attacks in Gaza, wounded Palestinians and buildings bombed. Here are the numbers: 12,320 eliminated terrorists, 16,188 attacks in Gaza, 29,200 wounded Palestinians, and 32,376 buildings bombed. This is not godly, nor is it humane.

Germany should allow peaceful protests in support of Palestinian freedom as well as legalize expressions of solidarity in the use of Palestinian symbols and slogans. The government should end the policing of students and hold police authorities accountable for violence and the application of discriminatory policies. Germany has both a moral and political obligation to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, and to stop arming and supporting the state of Israel in its war against the Palestinians, inside as well as outside of Germany. It should abide by its democratic laws and ensure that history indeed does not repeat itself, because no one wants another Auschwitz in Gaza – or elsewhere.

Anmeldung for Everyone – A Campaign Against Kafkaesque Bureaucracy

Anmeldung für Alle is launching a campaign that aims to simplify one of the biggest hurdles new immigrants in major German cities face.


04/12/2023

The Anmeldung (registration of residence) is one of the first and biggest hurdles that people moving to Berlin have to face. Without Anmeldung, you cannot open a bank account, nor can you obtain a tax ID. Both are prerequisites for obtaining a work contract in Germany. Without a job, however, it is practically impossible to find housing. For many migrants the vicious circle of Anmeldung means exclusion from basic rights and services that are essential to leading a dignified life.

  • We demand universal Anmeldung for all Berliners through the creation of a new municipal institution specifically for this purpose, where it would be possible to provisionally register and receive mail.

  • We demand the decriminalization of solidarity actions from the civilian population. False registrations (Scheinanmeldungen) are not a crime, but a reaction to the housing crisis and the bureaucratic obstacle of the Anmeldung.

  • We demand a solution to the housing crisis as well as to the Anmeldung problem. For this, it is necessary to build new affordable housing, but also to remove many of those properties that already exist from the market circuit and socialize them.

Why is it so difficult to register your residence in Berlin?

Anyone who has ever looked for an apartment or a room in the German capital knows how difficult it is to find an affordable place to live. Financial speculation has turned housing into a commodity and rents are continuously on the rise. Faced with a huge supply problem in the affordable housing stock, new Berliners especially, but long-established Berliners as well, often can only find rooms or apartments to sublet and, in most cases, only on a temporary basis. Many WGs (shared apartments) are only offered with the restriction “No Anmeldung” because of the strict control exercised by the landlords. The landlords can check who is staying in the apartments and often refuse permission to sublet so that they can cancel existing contracts. That way, they are able to rent or sell the property for an updated and more profitable price.

What basic rights depend on the Anmeldung?

Without the Anmeldung it is almost impossible to open a bank account or obtain a tax ID: two necessary conditions for finding formal employment in Germany. Nor is it possible to access public services such as health insurance, or the various state subsidies available to cover housing (Wohngeld), family (Kindergeld) and study costs (BAföG). People are also excluded from the fundamental democratic right to register a public assembly or protest (Versammlungsrecht). Last but not least, the presentation of an Anmeldung is often a condition for the visa application and renewal.

Who is particularly affected by the vicious circle of the Anmeldung?

Finding housing and therefor Anmeldung in Berlin is a major obstacle for anyone who does not come from a wealthy family. However, migrants are particularly affected by this situation because compared to people born and raised in Germany, migrants have fewer contacts and less robust networks. They also do not have the same knowledge of their rights, the language and the local bureaucracy. For migrants without EU citizenship, the consequences are even more serious, insofar as their residence in the country depends directly on the Anmeldung. For the same reason, the risk of sexual aggression, abuse and other types of violence, especially against women and queer people, increases.

People born in Germany usually already have a tax ID, a bank account and an Anmeldung at some previous place of residence. However, they also cannot apply for state benefits if they are not registered in the Bundesland (federal state) in which they live.

Our Vision

We strive for a society in which access to basic rights such as housing and work does not depend on bureaucratic hurdles, discriminatory practices, or the will of the market. We want a society in which the shaping of urban space is a social practice and not the result of the pursuit of profit; a society in which housing is a right and not a commodity!

Join our struggle!

Sign this appeal. The more official supporters of the campaign appear with their logo on the posts and flyers, the more weight we can give to the demands. If you would like to sign the appeal with your organization, association or other collective or if you would like to work as part of the campaign, please send us an email to: anmeldung-fuer-alle@riseup.net

Spread the word about the campaign. We would be delighted if you spread the appeal to make more people aware of the vicious cycle of Anmeldung and this campaign. Talk to friends, acquaintances and family about the issue, make them aware of the problem and share the campaign’s post on your social media channels.

CAMPAIGN LAUNCH

Tuesday, December 5th, Grüner Salon, Rosa Luxemburg Platz 2

Remembering the Kristallnacht in the times of collective punishment of the Palestinians

Kristallnacht should remind us of the barbarity of collective punishment


November 9-10 is a time to remember the ‘Kristallnacht’. Literally meaning, “night of the broken glass”, Kristallnacht – also known as the “November pogrom” – was a time of widespread violence towards the Jewish population of Germany, committed primarily on 9–10 November 1938. This marked a turning point in the persecution of the Jews in Germany and was a paving stone in the horrific path which ultimately led to the concentration camps and gas chambers. The violence was planned and initiated centrally by the Nazi party, but was carried out at local levels by members of armed wing of the Nazis (the SA and the SS), giving it an appearance of mass anger against the Jewish population.

The Kristallnacht was marked by the widespread destruction of Jewish property and places of worship. More than 1400 synagogues throughout Germany were destroyed, together with 7500 Jewish homes and businesses, community centres and even cemeteries. The broken glass from the destroyed properties gave rise to the name “Kristallnacht”, which is actually a euphemism for the widespread destruction of Jewish lives and livelihoods. More than 400 people were murdered or driven to suicide and in the following days the German security police, the Gestapo, arrested around 30,000 Jewish men, who were sent to concentration camps where many were murdered or died. Kristallnacht was a terrible sign of the horrors of the holocaust to come. While the Kristallnacht is remembered by the world, what is not so well remembered are the events leading up to Kristallnacht used by the Nazis as a pretext for unleashing such violence on the Jews of Germany.

The persecution of the Jews had been increasing in intensity ever since Hitler came to power in 1933 through a series of anti-Jewish laws restricting the rights of German Jews to means of livelihood and dignified lives. This persecution was heightened by the first mass deportation of Jews from Germany in the so-called “Polenaktion” (Polish action) in which more than 17,000 Polish Jews were expelled from Germany on 28 October 1938. They were ordered to leave their homes in a single night and were allowed only one suitcase per person to carry their belongings. They were put on trains to the Polish border where the Polish border police pushed them back into Germany. This continued for days in the November cold and rain, with the persecuted remaining without food and shelter between the two borders. A British newspaper wrote that hundreds “are reported to be lying about, penniless and deserted, in little villages along the frontier near where they had been driven out by the Gestapo and left.” A British woman, who had gone to help the expelled people, recalled that conditions in the refugee camps “Were so bad that some actually tried to escape back into Germany and were shot.”

Among these expelled Jewish families was the Grynszpan family. The family had emigrated from Poland in 1911 and had been living in Hannover ever since. On 3rd November 1938, their 17 year old son, Herschel Grynszpan, who was living in Paris with his uncle, received a postcard from the family describing the dire situation on the German-Polish border. They asked him for any help he could provide. On 7th November 1938, Herschel went to the German embassy in Paris with a revolver and fired five bullets at Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat. Herschel made no attempt to escape and freely confessed to the shooting. He carried a postcard in his pocket with the message to his parents, “May God forgive me … I must protest so that the whole world hears my protest, and that I will do.”

Vom Rath died of his injuries on 9th November, 1938. This assassination provided the pretext for the Nazis to attack the Jewish population with unprecedented ferocity during Kristallnacht. Nazi propaganda portrayed the violence against the Jews of Germany as an outbreak of “spontaneous national rage” sparked by the “cowardly murder” in Paris. For the Nazis, this individual act of “terrorism” was the excuse to inflict collective punishment on the Jews of Germany. What happened subsequently is history, a history that should never be repeated.

The memory of Kristallnacht, therefore, acquires further poignancy at this time of collective punishment of the Palestinian population by Israel, using the “terrorism” of Hamas as pretext. Following Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians and soldiers on 7th October, 2023 (killing 1200 people and taking 200 Israelis hostage) the relentless bombing of Gaza by the Israeli Defence Forces has killed more than 10´5,000 people and nearly completely destroyed Gaza. Houses, mosques, hospitals and refugee camps have been indiscriminately bombed and destroyed. Food, water, fuel and electricity have been cut off and Gazans from the North of the strip have been forced from their homes. Hundreds of thousands are now concentrated in the south, desperately trying to escape the death and destruction.

The concept of collective punishment is abhorrent, whoever be its victims and perpetrators. It is also illegal; a war crime prohibited in both international and non-international armed conflicts by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Article 6 of the Additional Protocol II. Article 33 states “No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.” Moreover, Article 13 of the Additional Protocol II states that “The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.” The prohibition against collective punishment was specifically incorporated in the Geneva Convention of 1949 because of the Nazis’ prolific use against Jews and other populations in Germany and the German-occupied territories. These include the village of Lidice in Czechoslovakia, in Oradour-sur-Glane in France, in Putten in the Netherlands, in Sant’Anna di Stazzema and Marzabotto in Italy, in Kortelisy in Soviet Ukraine and in Pirčiupia in Lithuania (where 119 people, including 49 children under 16, were burned alive by a German punishment squadron following an attack of Soviet partisans in a nearby forest).

It is, therefore, ironic that the Jewish state of Israel, the state formed by and for the original victims of collective punishment, is today using it against the Palestinian population of Gaza, with most world governments remaining silent and simultaneously stating it as a right of the Israeli government to “self defence”. The pretext of self defence in the face of apparent acts of individual “terrorism”, disregarding the contexts producing such acts, has long been used by repressive states when inflicting collective punishment on populations. The description of the Palestinians as “human animals” by the Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant is eerily reminiscent of the Nazi characterization of Jews as “sub-humans”. In the so called “war against terror,” over the last two decades, collective punishment has often been normalized as “collateral damage.” We see this playing out in Gaza too. However, it would be an utter disrespect to the memories of the victims of Kristallnacht, and of the many other instances of collective punishment by the Nazis, not to recognize what is happening today in Gaza as the collective punishment of the Palestinians and to demand an immediate stop to it.

“Against Muslims Today means against Jews again Tomorrow”

Speech by Iris Hefets (Jüdische Stimme) and Nadija Samour (Palästina Spricht) at the anti-war demonstration, 25th November 2023 at Brandenburger Tor


03/12/2023

IRIS:

21 years ago, I—literally—forced my family to emigrate from Israel to Berlin. They weren’t happy with the decision, but I didn’t see a future in an increasingly militarised society. Shortly after I was on the streets with hundreds of thousands of others of all colours protesting against the war in Iraq. Here I was, an Israeli, protesting with so many people against the war—I thought surely I had landed in the middle of a dream.

That was Germany in 2003, where nationalism, militarisation, and war were still up for debate. A Germany, where many still knew the meaning of war.

Twenty years later, those who call for a ceasefire are denounced as “Putin-Sympathisers” and “Hamas-supporters.” This is frightening.

NADIJA:

Yes—20 years later we live in a Germany in which unconditional solidarity with war crimes and genocide is reason of state, and in which Palestinians and their supporters by default no longer have basic rights.

I want to remind us of what is happening right now on the Gaza Strip. Since it seems as though the German media attempt to deny and distort the immeasurable pain caused, with full support from the EU and USA, by the Israeli war machine. As we stand here, more than 14,800 people have been murdered, half of them children. More than 6,800 still lie beneath the rubble of destroyed homes and schools. 1.7 million are fleeing; that is 77% of the total population of one of the most densely inhabited areas in the world.

That begs the question: to where should they flee? The Gaza Strip has not only been besieged and occupied for decades, but since October 9th has been cut off completely from fuel, power, water, and food. Without the international community taking action to save lives. Nearly 100 journalists have been murdered on the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank by the Israeli army, medical personnel, hospitals and ambulances, schools, refugee camps, mosques and churches—everything is being bombed, destroyed. On top of it all comes the claim that the victims are at fault because they supposedly share common cause with Hamas.

But unconditional solidarity with war crimes and genocide did not begin driving politics in Germany as of October 2023. Normalisation and full support in word and deed of Israeli settlement colonialism, apartheid and military occupation of Palestinian territories have paved the way for Germany to once again be involved as a world political superpower.

IRIS:

Germany had to rehabilitate itself after the last World War. Because Germans could not speak with the direct victims—be it because they were murdered or, were they able to escape, wanted nothing more to do with Germany—a suitable proxy for reparations was found: the state of Israel.

That was a good solution for all involved. Chancellor Adenauer could carry on rebuilding Germany with former Nazis. Prime Minister Ben Gurion, who was responsible for the first ethnic cleansing in Palestine, got urgently needed money. One hand washes the other.

It was primarily civil initiatives that triggered the German public’s confrontation of deep-seated antisemitism and the crimes committed during the war. Noteworthy examples include the Stolpersteine and the “Places of Remembering” in the Bavarian quarter.

German politics discovered a moral goldmine; ‘the Jews’ were chosen as the object of reparations and Israel as their representative. From ‘the Jews’, who were nearly obliterated because they were stand-ins for ‘the bad guys’ became ‘the good guys’. Very convenient.

Today, the some 200,000 Jewish people living in Germany comprise neither a political nor an economic or electoral power. The Central Jewish Council—who, even under Heinz Galinski and Ignaz Bubis cooperated and showed solidarity with other minorities – is financed by the German government and instrumentalised against Muslims.

In the 1930s, many German Jews denied the racism directed at them and were certain that Germans ‘only’ had something against Eastern Jews. They thought that they were safe because they fought for Germany in the first world war.

Against Muslims today means being against Jews again tomorrow.

NADIJA:

At the same time Germany has elevated Palestinians to being the enemies of the state, projecting onto them ‘barbaric’ traits such as antisemitism, misogyny, queerphobia, and so on. Painting a portrait of the enemy serves a German nationalism that wants to exist in the world once more. Israel serves to showcase a substitute nationalism. A purified Great Germany, that arms its deadly borders, threatens mass deportation, creates racist exclusions through tightened residency and naturalisation laws, and attempts to hinder every resistance with police violence, protest bans and defamation. A purified Great Germany that measures domestic nationalism in weapons exports, all the while believing, despite its core imperialism, it can maintain a clean image.

IRIS:

Today we lack civil resistance to these alarming totalitarian tendencies found hiding behind the ‘fight for western values’ in the Ukraine, or the ‘fight against antisemitism’.

Much alive, and also to be said, very deadly is Adenauer-Globke-Ben-Gurion-ethnic cleansing,  which merges into Scholz-Habeck-AfD-Netanyahu-genocide in Gaza.

in 2010 I published an article in the “taz” — back then I could still write for the German press. It was called ‘Walking on Tiptoe’. It began like this:

‘What do the two professors Ilan Pappe (Israel), Norman Finkelstein (USA) and the publicist Hajo Meyer (Germany) have in common? All three are Jewish, holocaust survivors or descendants thereof, and vehement critics of Israel’s politics.

‘What do the city of Munich, the Trinity church in Berlin, and the Heinrich Böll and Rosa Luxemburg foundations have in common? They, after granting initial permission, disinvited Ilan Pappe and Norman Finkelstein and denied them the event venues promised to them. Just as the Holy Spirit Church in Frankfurt did to Hajo Meyer a few years prior. And so, the aforementioned institutions gave in to the pressures of pro-Israel circles who denounced Finkelstein, Pappe, and Meyer as ‘Anti-Semites’.

Those were the beginnings of state cleansing – through not the AfD or other brownshirt organisations – but supposed progressive actors. All the while, children and eventually the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, are taught by presumed ‘Jew-friendly’ politicians what antisemitism is.

The Bundestag will gut the constitution by replacing legislation with ‘resolutions’. The anti-BDS resolution, supported nearly without exception from the AfD to the Linke, was an alarming sign. Representatives knew that such content as “law” – had no chance of passing because it transgressed upon the right to freedom of speech embedded in the constitution. The perfidious thing is that legal action cannot be taken against such a resolution because it is not legally binding. A new resolution titled ‘Protect Jewish life in Germany’ now threatens us – a resolution according to which those who criticise Israel, incriminate themselves in so-called ‘anti-semitism in relation to Israel’. They risk deportation or having their citizenship application rejected. The AfD no longer needs to become the ruling party, their xenophobic agenda is already coming to fruition. But Germans shouldn’t consider themselves out of harm’s way, either. Cultural institutions that give criticism of Israel a platform, for example, risk losing future financing. By contrast, it seems almost harmless that our organisation, ‘Jewish Voice for Peace in the Middle East’ (JVP), had its BFS bank account closed in the name of the fight against anti-semitism a few years ago. Jewish people who do not fit the current German portrait of a Jew are undesirable.

I was invited to speak here because five weeks ago I did not want to be silenced by an unconstitutional protest ban. The JVP was not allowed to protest on Oranienplatz, so I went to Hermannplatz in Neukölln alone with a sign that read ‘As an Israeli and a Jew: Stop the Genocide in Gaza’. There I was taken into custody by the Berlin police. After a police investigation the officers apologised to me because I was right according to the constitution and I was escorted to a spot where I stood with the sign for about two hours. Two weeks ago, at a protest for an immediate ceasefire I was again taken into custody with the same sign. The sign was confiscated and the police filed a criminal complaint against me for Volksverhetzung [1]. The same happened to others at this demonstration. Such cases are counted toward statistics on anti-semitic crimes since October 7th.

NADIJA:

As a lawyer who receives a lot of mandates from the Palestinian community, I can report that anti-Palestinian and anti-Jewish repression as Iris describes have been well-known to us for years.

People are losing their work and residency status; artistic venues and cultural institutions are losing their funding; police violence against protesters is celebrated; the media is overrun with shocking propaganda and a general climate of intimidation prevails. Indeed, since October, we experience all this to a degree that I could not have seen coming. In October in Berlin alone, all Palestine protests were blanket-banned through general decree. Pro-Israel celebrations, organised by the state apparatus itself, naturally were not covered by this ban. In Neukölln, a dominantly Arabic working-class neighbourhood, the police ruled the streets with impunity. Arabic-looking individuals were arbitrarily stopped, searched and registered on the street. Schoolchildren have been subjected to disciplinary action and violence at the hands of teachers because the Berlin education senator wanted to forbid the Keffiyeh or other Palestinian symbols. And we are now dealing with thousands of court proceedings involving people who wanted to take advantage of their fundamentally secured right to assembly. But—we must say, clearly and distinctly: it was the daily, unwavering gatherings on Sonnenallee and other parts of the city that finally succeeded in breaking through the protest ban. It was the solidarity of tens of thousands of Berliners and internationalists who fought for the rights of Palestinians. Today at this protest, too, is it important to demand, loud and clear, solidarity with the Palestinian people. Why? Edward Said, one of the most well-known Palestinian intellectuals, tells us: ‘think of solidarity with the Palestinian people here and all over Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia, and think, too, of the fact that there is something which engages many, despite the difficulty and obstacles.

‘And why? Because that something is just, a noble ideal, a moral strive toward equality and human rights.’

Long live international solidarity! Free Palestine!

Thank you very much Iris.

Translation: Shav McKay. Reproduced with Permission

Footnote

1 Literally ‘rabble-rousing’, incitement of the people, mass instigation. Conceptually, this is intended in German law to prevent viewpoints considered dangerous to social order from spreading.