Swabians In Berlin Soon To Be Wearing Yellow Mercedes Stars

Remember that Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in Berlin back in the bad old days with all those signs and scribblings about “Don’t Buy from Jews!” and the like? Of course you don’t.

Schwaben

But many from Berlin’s enlightened anti-gentrification left do remember and have now come up with the breathtakingly brilliant idea of introducing this same simple asymmetrical tactic against the “hated” Berlin Swabian community by spraying “Don’t Buy from Swabians!” on the walls around town, too.

The evil Swabians are hated here, you see, because they work hard and are successful and make lots of money (and the cliché goes that they’re  tightwads, too, but that’s beside the point) and, through their very presence, therefore increase Berlin property values which is an awful thing to do because those of the enlightened left (like most other Germans) do not own property but prefer to pay rent instead and this pushes the rents up and laber, laber, laber (blah, blah, blah) been there done that.

There can be no losers in Germany in general and Berlin in particular, you see (it’s verboten or something). That’s why there are so many of them here, I guess.

Der anonyme Unmut regt sich gegen die Schwaben, weil sie angeblich die Besonderheiten des Stadtviertels veränderten und die Preise auf dem Wohnungsmarkt in die Höhe trieben. In Berlin leben schätzungsweise rund 300.000 Schwaben.

„Kauft nicht bei Schwab’n!“

Empörungsprofis

Outrage professionals.

Farce

A farce, this “protest movement” at the East Side Gallery. And a well-written article, this is. But sorry, I don’t have the time or the energy to translate it today.

Wo war eigentlich Claudia Roth?

Hoff The Wall

David Hasselhoff himself, “adored by fans in Germany after his 1989 performance of his song Looking for Freedom on top of the Berlin Wall,” is mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore and will now sign a petition opposing the further removal of remnants of the wall at Berlin’s East Side Gallery.

David Hasselhoff

But that’s not the interesting part of this article, I find. The following line is:

He once complained that his role in the reunification of East and West Germany had been overlooked following the fall of the Berlin Wall.

His role in the reunification of East and West Germany? I don’t get it. David Hasselhoff’s roles are always overlooked. That’s just what he does. That’s his trademark, so-to-speak. So let’s move on and overlook his latest role here while we’re at it, too.

“How can you tear down the wall that signifies freedom, perseverance and the sacrifice of human life?”

Remove 20 Meters?

Of a 1.3-kilometer stretch of the Berlin Wall?

Wall

And you can still find 300 people who care?

The real issue: This is being done to build a road to a new luxury condominium so, well, the yuppie scum must be behind it again.

“Does culture no longer have any value?”

And We Don’t Like Swabians Either

You already knew that Berlin’s Left had problems with all of those annoying, gentrifying foreign out-of-towners who won’t leave town. Now Ärger (resentment) has broken out with gentrifying German out-of-towners from Swabia (the region around Stuttgart in southwestern Germany) who won’t leave either.

Swabians go home!

More specifically, “native” Prenzlauer Berg Berliners of the poltically correct kind are pissed off these days about the confusion that reigns whenever they want to order their local breakfast buns in the morning (called Schrippen here). The upwardly mobile Swabians who now live here too prefer calling them by the name they use for them down south in their own neck of the woods: Wecken. And this is just plain wrong. Or something. And an issue. A German issue even. A classic German petty bourgeoisie issue even, even.

In fact, this German petty bourgeoisie issue has become such a German petty bourgeoisie issue that Bundestag Vice President Wolfgang Thierse (SPD) himself felt compelled to note in a recent newspaper interview that “I’m annoyed whenever I go to my local baker and find out that there are no more Schrippen for sale, only Wecken. In Berlin we say Schrippen – and the Swabians ought to get used to that.”

This would be funny except that he meant it. Which makes it funny after all, come to think of it. And I’m not even making this stuff up, people.

“Ich ärgere mich, wenn ich beim Bäcker erfahre, dass es keine Schrippen gibt, sondern Wecken. In Berlin sagt man Schrippen – daran könnten sich selbst Schwaben gewöhnen.”

Yuppie Scum Need Not Apply

What would you do if hords of uninvited strangers suddenly started pouring into your city for temporary visits in order to pump boatloads of money into your local economy? What would you do if affluent and upwardly mobile young expats moved into your neighborhood(s) and started opening businesses, buying homes and increasing the property values there?

Gentrification here? Nein, danke!

Why you’d freak the hell out and demand that they get the freak out of Dodge by sundown, wouldn’t you? Oh, you wouldn’t? Then you’re not German. Worse still: You don’t live in Berlin and you’re not a Berliner, either.

Viva the Hipster Antifa Neukölln or something.

“The anti-foreigner thing started as a bit of a joke but now it is much more serious. This is critical, it is sneaking into mainstream thinking – it’s almost being perceived as normal to dislike tourists.”

The German Petty Bourgeoisie At Its/Their Best

One thing that all Germans have in common is their absolute disgust for all things kleinbürgerlich (petty bourgeois). You know; being small-minded, scrupulously orderly, old fashioned, reactionary, banal, provencial, dilettante and, well, “square?”

Another thing that all Germans have in common is that they are small-minded, scrupulously orderly, old fashioned, reactionary, banal, provencial, dilettante and, well, “square.” You know, kleinbürgerlich?

Take this latest tourist-bashing craze going on by the Enlightened Left in Berlin (the way coolest, least kleinbürglich city in Germany), please:

“Noisy tourists go home!” reads one hostile sign in the eastern district of Friedrichshain. “Berlin doesn’t love you,” say stickers plastering traffic lights in nearby Kreuzberg.

A gallery in an area known for its trendy bars featured for months a scrawled sign in the window: “Sorry, no entry for hipsters from the U.S.”

Being petty bourgeois here isn’t pretty, folks. It never has been. But it sure is petty. And somebody’s got to do it. I just wish they’re weren’t so many volounteers here all the time.

Gentrification Giants 1 – Subculture Vultures 0

An evicted group of about 20 subculture artist/activist types chained to the remains of Berlin’s graffiti-covered Tacheles alternative scene “living space” ruin is about to be forcibly dragged out kicking and screaming into German reality by black-clad gentrification special forces troops right here live on TV, I hope, but nobody can tell me when. Or on which channel or anything (maybe later in the Internetz?).

The group is defending “one of Berlin’s last bastions of alternative subculture, and are fighting eviction ahead of plans to develop it (the Tacheles) as an office and luxury apartments complex” and has to be dealt with accordingly, of course. After years of pussyfooting around with them first, I mean.

I would advise them not to let the door hit them on the way out but there are no doors at the Tacheles as they were surely used as firewood  long ago during one of those quaint, Stone Age let’s-not-freeze-to-death-tonight gettogethers so popular with artist types there and elsewhere here in Berlin.

Tacheles “is just the latest in a long line of public spaces that have been lost to private investors” and will surely be missed by all, myself not included.

Darko stands behind an iron gate, his bare chest daubed in red paint with the words “victim of bank.”

PS: This German subculture is not to be confused with this other German subculture here.

Phase-Out Gentrification Now!

Other cities would love to have a problem like this. Berlin takes in 20 million tourist overnight stays a year, and the number keeps rising. Investors and property owners keep rolling into the Stadt like, well, investors and property owners.

But for many Berliners, this is a crisis or something. This means that their city is in the process of becoming something called bürgerlich (a German cuss word meaning middle-class or bourgeois). Berlin is becoming gentrified (meaning upgraded, by the way), which is absolutely unacceptable because, well, many Berliners don’t want to upgraded, thank you.

You see, bourgeois gentrification ist deshalb (is on these grounds) unacceptable because it is a sign of economic dynamism in a city that has long been thought not to have any. Gentrification means that money is coming into town, that Berlin is becoming more attractive for that tasteless middle-class ambience so dreaded here, that the self-contained and highly subsidized island of Berlin is suddenly becoming a place of social mobility where middle-class lifestyle visions (which none of you out there share) are now apparently easier to realize here than elsewhere in the country.

German Gentrification is bad for Berlin, in other words. It has to be phased-out, just like German nuclear energy was. And don’t get them wrong or anything, it’s not because these Berliners are being intolerant here or anything. It’s just that they are being intolerant here - and acting more bourgeois than the bourgeoisie they despise.

Wer hätte sich träumen lassen, dass ausgerechnet das arme Berlin einmal ein Gentrifizierungsproblem haben würde? Es könnte schlimmere Nachrichten geben.

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