On the left tour?: How journalists enriched themselves at a Berlin apartment building

This is where the left alternative heart of Kreuzberg beat. Street battles between autonomists and the police, squats, colorful life, organic shops – and with the fall of the Wall, money came to Oranienstrasse, and with it gentrification, expensive rents. Crime scene: house number 169. Real estate sharks are said not to have been at work here, but left-wing opinion leaders, well-known journalists, as the “mirror” reports.

One of them was once editor-in-chief of the “Berliner Zeitung”, she herself sharply criticized the sale of city apartments and praised them as public property. The owners worked for “taz”, “Zeit”, “Süddeutsche Zeitung” and for “Spiegel” itself.

Now they are suspected of cheating and enriching themselves with tax money at the expense of the tenants. And in the end wanting to sell the house for a profit of millions. It’s about Pharisaism, preaching water, drinking wine. The left-green milieu is suspected along with the owners: isn’t it better than the hard-nosed capitalists?

At least the sale to an investor seems to have been averted and the tenants saved. “This 12 million euro deal shouldn’t exist,” says Florian Schmidt (Greens), district councilor for Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, on Sunday. He demands that there should be no sale of the house at market value.