More than 1 500 police have removed the 50 occupants of a graffiti-covered building in a gentrified part of former East Berlin, which had housed an ‘anarchist-queer-feminist’ community since 1999.
The building, known as Liebig 34 – after its address, 34 Liebigstrasse – has been described as ‘a now-rare symbol of the German capital’s radical-left alternative community’.
The BBC reported that, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many students, young people and radical anarchist groups moved to occupy derelict buildings in eastern parts of the city. But many owners have reclaimed properties as neighbourhoods became trendy and house prices soared over the next two decades.
In the case of Liebig 34, the owner decided not to renew the lease two years ago, and sued the occupants when they refused to leave.
Police began enforcing the eviction order early on Friday. A few hundred people held a protest as officers removed residents from the four-storey building one by one.
A lawyer for the squatters told AFP: ‘It goes against human rights to throw people out on to the street in the middle of a pandemic, when they cannot pay their rents.’
Reports said that, in contrast to eviction attempts in the 1990s, Friday’s operation was largely peaceful. Authorities said they only encountered passive resistance from residents as they carried people individually down a fire engine ladder.