It is two years ago now, that we moved in the evicted, rotting houses of the Gängeviertel. Back then, the last pieces of this historical quarter were already doomed and, like almost everywhere in the city center of Hamburg, contracts for soulprive office buildings already signed.
We invited countless people to hear our ideas, to discover the quarter and to experience the art and culture created by us, and to simply have a nice time together with us.
At the same time we saved the buildings from breaking down as good as we could, negotiated with representatives of the authorities and acchieved the impossible:
we stayed.
More than tenthousand people followed our invitation, and without the support of so many people we never could have saved these 12 houses located now like a bioshpere surrounded by glass facades.
But from the beginning on there always was more than just the intention to preserve a piece of the historical part of the city. It was also about breaking the circle of gentrification: increasing value followed by driving people off- like it was part of our lives before.
It was and is about another idea of a city. A city that is not organised by location and financial usability interests, but one that enriches the lives of its inhabitants and consists of more than bleak working places, over- expensive rental houses and soulless shopping zones. The idea Gängeviertel is more than just a quarter.
Many things happend in Hamburg in the past two years. With the manifest „Not in our Name“ artists and cultural creators protested against their role as the fig-leaf of the marketing brand Hamburg. United by 'right to the city' movement people and initiatives of all kinds came together to exchange and create ideas of an alternative urban life and to fight for them.
With their passionate creative actions and concepts a soil was created throughout the city on which a new form of metropolis could have the chance to grow. These new developments connected with those already existing- the Red Flora, the Harbour Street, the Falkenried Terrasses and many other social- and residencial projects showing and living powerful alternative drafts to the addiction of real estate investors and the politics of the highest biddings.
We negotiated with politicians, brought in our ideas and hoped to start a learning process that would lead authorities to the awareness that it takes more than a quarter to make this city a place worth living.
Today, over 1000 free exhibitions, concerts, debates, community cooking, theater plays, lectures, conferences and estimated 200.000 volunteer working hours later, we are forced to appear as applicants again, because authorities mercifully allow us to stay.
We really do ask ourselves how much more we have to present to politicians after creating the concept for the quarter that is to be realized, founding the cooperative, caring for the buildings and offering a cultural program that they could never ever realize, but with which they brag internationally.
For us, this quarter is much more than just a beautyfication of real-estate statistics and the banality of pecuniary interest. It is about a kind of freedom that enables lively culture and about people taking responsibility for that. But these people need something for it: reliability,respect and tolerance.
Climbing up on the roof of the factory today in the heart of the quarter and in the middle of the city we let our eyes wander under the deep hanging grey clouds of the hamburgian summer over the rooftops. Our attention gets caught by a gigantic word bubble wavering over the city hall, which pops outs empty words like „participation of citizens“, „social city planning“ and long speeches about the immorality of vacancy in a city with a lack of 20.000 apartments. The products of the phrasemakers clash with a reality that refuses to fit with those flowery words. A lot has been promised by the campaign- makers and politicians- but when will they come, those 6.000 apartments a year, or the resolute initiatives against vacant real estate objects of speculators?
On the other side of the city, in the Juliusstrasse, the Rindermarkthalle or the Altonaer tax-administration building we can still see traces of pepper spray and batons on the faces of those who were courageous enough to take the words against vacancy serious and tried to give the city more than a quarter.
One look at our internet platform „Leerstandsmelder“ ( vacancy observer) is enough to tell us that there is no lack of room but lack of will.
While we hear the voices of the many visitors down in the alleyways coming week after week to join exhibitions, discussions, concerts and other events, our looks go to St. Pauli, where so-called landmarks are being built faster and faster.
The 'dancing towers' already spoil the scene, but they fit well with all the other desolate, vacant skyscrapers in this part of the town. At their doorstep people of the area fight for the right to stay in their homes- in the 'Esso- buildings' and in the Bernhard-Nocht- street. They fight out of the same reason as we do: for them, St Pauli is more than just a quarter.
And there still is the question: where should all the people go when they are pushed out?
We see them standing in long queues trying to get apartments in the suburban areas, and we see prices for rents beating records on and on. On the other side are the responsible persons who invented a fancy strategy to fight housing shortage: they simply deny that it exists with a cold smile.
The failed municipal politics carried on for years and have now left traces in the streets. They show the logos of real estate agents and promote spacious, multifunctional offices in every second building- but obviously there is a lack of customers. Nevertheless thousands of additional office- squaremeters are built. Taking a look at 'Harbourcity' quarter proves that. The 'Elbphilharmony' reigns over the clinically dead district like a billion-euro-memorial, reminding us of who has the power to speak and for whom this new city is built. We may be allowed to play a bit- but surely not outside our little quarter.
As our eyes go back north we see the city selling itself more and more, and prostituting her liquid heart, the Alster, to an obscene bathing doll of an cosmetics enterprise, while sex workers in St. Georg are evicted because they spoil the reputed pittoresque cityscape.
All over town big events for the tourist industry pop up- 'Harley Days', 'Schlagermove' (cheesy music parade) and more, while repeatedly year after year much ado is made about the 'Schanzenfest' (a block party with flea market, food and dance which has become famous for youngster street riots in the past 6-7 years), an event actually created and organised by neighbors of the district.
Public spaces like the 'Spielbudenplatz' (part of the Reeperbahn street) are partly privatized and now dominated by private security although projects like 'Park fiction' (public park at the waterfront in St. Pauli) show that open spaces can be created in a different way- with success.
We turn away. We have seen enough- but we have watched for too long now.
We climb down the rusty ladder down to the alleyways. We meet our friends, our guests, you, that share our feelings and thoughts and come to us to escape the madness out there for a while and share an alternative. On the long way down we think of the time a hundred years ago, when big parts of the city were covered by small alleyways and wonder if the vibrancy and the ideas could spread nowadays just like then. We need more than a quarter, much more. Are you with us?
We realized very well that politicians have learned a lot in the last ten years. First of all: they enhanced their rhetorical skills. A lot has been promised and announced. The sole reigning SPD (social democrats party) acts as if they had understood a lot of what´s happening in the city. But no actions follow. Meanwhile we learn what we are seen as behind the scene, if we take a look into the communication- concept for the freeway A7 made by FischerAppelt (public relation company), commissioned by the black and green government coalition not so long ago. Instead of taking the interests of participation by citizens seriously, and taking it as a chance, people are treated as troublemakers which are to be cut off.
A whole arsenal of instruments is used to manipulate public perception: for example pro- active press promotion using multiplicants, de-escalating information and standardized language. How about simply listening to people and caring about their concerns?? For example in Altona, in the allotment gardens, in Wilhelmsburg, in St. Pauli or in the Schanze, in the Gängeviertel, St. Georg or any other part of Hamburg?
We look across the borders of our city into the world and it gets clearer and clearer that a simple „carry on like this“ is not enough anymore. The dismissal of the consensus counting until today that public interests are to be put under the primacy of economic values goes out from Tel Aviv, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Athens, Cairo, and Tripolis. We try here and now to tie the fights up to those in the past and to connect with actual situations to move something. Something that tries to create freedom and to take responsibilities.
We are fed up with false avowals of politicians who try to split us at any chance given, to manipulate or to use fake participation and contracts to fool us.
Why is it so hard to give people back responsibility for their environment, for their city?
On every corner we are asked for more individual responsibility. We actually want it! We want self- organisation and responsibility for the things that affect us directly. Because the city belongs to us! The voices that have risen and all the cells from where another way of living will emerge are very real and will not vanish. Accept that!
We are against a city built on fundaments of some investor´s dreams that segregates and evicts people and we are for a city that is built by and for its inhabitants. Don´t just take a quarter- take the whole city!
Gängeviertel, August 2011
