A two-storey villa with five rooms, three bathrooms, two kitchens, an elevator, a pool and a large garden. It is located in the middle of a bourgeois housing estate in Lankwitz, just a 15-minute walk from the Schlossstrasse shopping boulevard. Ruth Pempelfort lived here until shortly after her 90th birthday and spent many happy years with her husband Karl-Heinz. Now needy women are to move in here. Ruth Pempelfort decided so before her death and converted her entire fortune into a foundation for this social project. It’s actually a nice idea if her last wish weren’t so difficult to implement.
Sabine Gudath
The couple’s property was renovated for 400,000 euros.
The former home of the Pempelforts has been renovated for 400,000 euros since October and is now ready for its new residents to move into. But they are a long time coming. Except for the housekeeping staff on the upper floor, only one elderly lady has lived all alone in the luxurious property. “I’m sad and disappointed,” says Michael Maaser, a specialist lawyer for tenancy and real estate law, who is also a board member of the Ruth and Karl-Heinz Pempelfort Foundation and has known the couple for more than 30 years. He is disappointed because he has the impression that hardly anyone is interested in the social project. Behind this lies considerable civil society commitment.
Sabine Gudath
Ruth and Karl-Heinz Pempelfort met at a Berlin university.
The lawyer had hoped for support from the authorities
“Ruth Pempelfort wanted to help poor women who don’t have a home and can’t afford one. Women who are no longer quite young, who are already retired or unable to work and no longer have a chance on the job market due to illness,” Maaser explains the meaning and purpose of the foundation, which has extremely large assets, since the couple owns several apartment buildings in Berlin owned. “So the concept is also designed for the long term,” he emphasizes, and it shouldn’t cost the women anything. However, the lawyer had also hoped for support from the authorities in placing women who receive social benefits.
Sabine Gudath
Lawyer Michael Maaser is the chairman of the foundation and responsible for implementing Ruth Pempelfort’s will.
In the summer of 2021, he initially approached the then social city councilor of the Steglitz-Zehlendorf district office with this concept. “It was difficult enough to get him on the phone,” he says. When he finally got hold of him, he promised to help, but nothing came from him after that. The lawyer had the district office put him in contact with a district women’s representative, who also visited him at Villa Pempelfort. “She was totally enthusiastic about the project and wanted to put me in touch with needy women,” he recalls. But after that he never heard from her again. Most recently, he also turned to the advisor to the then Senator for Social Affairs. But he explained that the responsibility for such projects lay with the districts, but that he wanted to pass it on. “Even after that, nothing ever happened,” says Maaser.
The former business graduate Ruth Pempelfort had it all so beautifully imagined during her lifetime: the women should have a better future in her villa. Her husband, a tax consultant with whom she was very happy, died 20 years before her. The chairman of the foundation explains their motives as follows: “The Pempelforts had no children or other relatives to whom they could inherit anything.” The couple, who met at the university in Berlin, lived very withdrawn and modestly and hardly used any of their assets for themselves issued. “Mrs. Pempelfort in particular was very wary of other people, and in the end the two only had each other.”
“Social Welfare Offices Cannot Take on Rent Acquisitions”
But why does her well-intentioned idea seem to attract so little interest? At the request of the Berliner Zeitung, the Senate Department for Social Affairs confirmed that Maaser had already contacted the office of the then Senator Elke Breitennach on September 21 last year. “At the following meeting of the AG Soziale Wohnhilfe on September 24, 2021, our colleagues from the Senate Social Administration passed this information, including the availability of RA Maaser, on to all districts,” explains authority spokesman Stefan Strauß. The responsible employees could have contacted Maaser immediately. All of this information was also in the minutes of the meeting on October 8, 2021. In October 2021, the senator’s office called Maaser again to find out how things were going.
“The problem is that the concept is obviously a purely social housing project without any counseling services and the social welfare offices in the districts cannot take on the offensive in acquiring tenants because they have to remain neutral,” explains Kristin Fischer from the Berlin initiative against violence against women ( BIG). That is why the chairman of the foundation must take care of finding suitable tenants himself, for example through the providers of social institutions. It’s not about belittling Ruth Pempelfort’s commitment. “Women in particular who receive social assistance hardly have a chance on the housing market and often fall behind,” she says.
Steglitz-Zehlendorf’s new social councilor Tim Richter (CDU) also emphasizes: “The offer from the Pempelfort Foundation is an impressive private initiative, certainly a flagship for the entire district.” social issues as a place to live and would continue to do so in the future. “However, we have no knowledge of the decision as to whether the women we advise will then contact the foundation. From my point of view, the offer is less of a classic women’s shelter. This specific location lacks the essential characteristics such as psychological care, anonymity for the residents and social care,” says Richter.
Michael Maaser has now tried through the church to reach target group-oriented residents. He has already found his first tenant. “I hope that soon there will be more women who would like to live here,” he says. The water in the pool of the villa has already been let in, the pool noodles and an exercise ball that the former resident left there are still unused at the edge of the pool. On the living room shelf is a small selection of the 4,500 science fiction novels that Ruth Pempelfort has read. Other women will soon be able to rummage through it and find peace here. It was her last wish.