Berlin – On the Monday after, they will be swept together. A resident of the left-wing autonomous housing project comes out of the entrance gate at Köpenicker Straße 137, his face tattooed and bald except for a pigtail. He has a broom in his hand and headphones with loud music in his ears, while he is sweeping up the remains of the evacuation of the neighboring car park last Friday.
Some of the gaps in the fence made by the evacuation tanks and saws by the police have been closed again with corrugated iron. Behind it you can still see the chains with which the residents were attached to the barricades, but in vain. 38 of them were arrested and taken away.
Only a gap in the fence remained, which almost looks like the entrance to a normal construction site. Inside, where colorful caravans were still standing until Friday, an excavator shovels the remains of dwellings, barricades and trees into a large pile, which is then removed by trucks.
The whole thing is guarded by scowling men who, when asked, do not want to reveal whether they are construction workers or security guards. Construction fences inside the courtyard separate them from the residents of the house next door, who continue to live here even after the wagon space has been cleared.
Leases for the house are valid until at least 2038
This is what it looks like, the new status quo. While the car park at Köpenicker Straße 133 to 136 was finally cleared after a good 30 years and the owner of the property could now build on it, there are leases for the apartments at Köpenicker Straße 137 until at least 2038. And there are still rights to stay beyond that, at least according to resident lawyer Moritz Heusinger.
But is it going to be peaceful after the police said there were 76 arrests and 39 injured officers around the evacuation? Only two police officers were injured so badly that they had to stop the operation and no numbers of injured counter-demonstrators are known. Videos are circulating on the Internet of police officers beating and shoving those present on Friday, with many of the emergency services remaining remarkably calm given the constant insults on the spot.
Calls are also circulating online to sabotage the neighboring construction site. It is unclear whether there should really be construction there. Köpi residents spread the rumor that the owner, Startezia GmbH, wanted to sell the property, which is worth an estimated 15.6 million euros, for a multiple of this sum. Whether this corresponds to the facts can hardly be checked, the Startezia GmbH responded to inquiries on Monday, as did the residents’ association.
Appeal of the residents has little chance of success
The appeal of the Wagenplatz residents against a judgment of the district court from June, which ordered the eviction, has not yet been decided. However, the Court of Appeal has already announced that after a preliminary examination, the appeal should have no prospect of success. Nevertheless, the residents’ association now has four weeks to comment on the matter again. Therefore, no date has yet been set for an oral hearing in the appeal process.
However, the chances that the eviction will be withdrawn again are more than slim. The residents of the wagon castle must therefore see where they are staying. According to the police, all 38 people arrested there are free again, unless there was anything against them. It is assumed that they could also have found accommodation with the residents of the house project, who interestingly only took part in the resistance verbally on Friday, probably for fear that they themselves could become the target of the police operation, which was only supposed to clear the wagons.
Further resistance is to be expected
The fears of the resident’s lawyer Heusinger, who said on Friday on the edge of the eviction, that the inmates were on the verge of a nervous breakdown and expected to sleep under the bridge in the future, should therefore not come true. But after the rubble has swept up, there could be further resistance on Köpenicker Strasse.