Last Friday the Berlin police evicted a group of Antifa squatters from a building on Liebigstraße in Berlin. The anarchists had been living there illegally for thirty years, but the Powers That Be have only now gotten around to removing them. The reason? The neighborhood has recently been “renovated”, i.e. gentrified, and the municipal authorities had been under pressure to get rid of the undesirables and their eyesore of a building. In other words, it was a typical NIMBY initiative on the part of affluent progressives.
Below are two news videos about the eviction. Notice that all the graffiti on the inner walls of the building seem to be in English. Do the residents not speak German?
Many thanks to MissPiggy for the translations, and to Vlad Tepes and RAIR Foundation for the subtitling. The translator includes this supplemental material:
The end of an era: Tour of the “Liebig 34”
A rare insight: The leftist (Antifa) squat in Berlin-Friedrichshain was tolerated for 30 years. The “residents” did everything to prevent the emergency services from entering the house. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the eviction of one of the last symbols of the left-wing extremist scene in Berlin went surprisingly smoothly. The Left Party and the Greens mourn the squatters’ departure from the “unique safe haven”.
At 7:25am the task force from the Berlin police department turned on the chainsaw. The door of the building at the address Liebigstraße 34 could not be opened with an ordinary crowbar. It had been barricaded so that no one could enter. The police announced that they would evict the residents of the house in the Friedrichshain district at 7am sharp. Preparations had been going on for days. A zone was cordoned off around the house, and police officers also took positions on the roofs of surrounding houses. The streets were cleared for heavy equipment. And that’s what was needed. Armored vehicles, a ladder crane and several police vehicles. Everything was used to evict the house of its occupants, and that’s exactly what happened. Since it was impossible to enter the main entrance of the building on the ground floor — even with a chainsaw — the first floor seemed more promising. With the help of scaffolding, the officials entered the building through a window.
Video #1 (Bild):
Video #2:
Video transcript #1:
| 00:02 | A show of resistance, even on the ladder. | |
| 00:07 | The police began evacuating the building at Liebigstraße 34 in the early hours of the morning. | |
| 00:12 | The squatters’ building in Berlin’s Friedrichshain district is considered a symbol of | |
| 00:16 | the left-wing radical scene. The night before, | |
| 00:20 | hundreds of demonstrators protested the eviction. Numerous cars were set on fire | |
| 00:24 | in the surrounding area. There were sporadic clashes between police and demonstrators. | |
| 00:31 | At 7am the eviction began. The Berlin police force was assisted | |
| 00:36 | by officials from eight federal states. In the building, about 40 people were holding out. | |
| 00:41 | An armored vehicle was positioned directly in front of the entrance door, but neither | |
| 00:44 | the court bailiff nor the police were able to enter the barricaded building. | |
| 00:49 | The police entered the building over the balcony on the first floor, utilizing scaffolding. | |
| 00:52 | Anyone that was expecting a quick storming of the building was wrong. | |
| 00:56 | It is basically due to the barricades. Colleagues are working on them. So are we. | |
| 01:02 | Surely as you’ve seen, using a chain saw, angle grinder and the like, to overcome these obstacles | |
| 01:06 | that were built, and of course that takes time. It takes time. | |
| 01:11 | At about 8 o’clock the first residents started to surrender. They allowed themselves to be led away | |
| 01:16 | down a ladder on the balcony. Some raised their fists in victory and were celebrated. | |
| 01:22 | While police inside the squat removed barricades, more and more squatters were led away. | |
| 01:28 | However, the resistance outside the Liebig 34 is not over yet. | |
| 01:33 | All in all, a good 1,500 people were gathered here at various points around Liebigstraße 34. | |
| 01:41 | Some of them were shouting and very emotional. Some of them were prepared to use violence. | |
| 01:45 | There were also a few bottles thrown at officers and, in some cases, a few arrests. | |
| 01:51 | Particularly alarming is that local elementary school children take part in the demonstrations. | |
| 01:56 | The Free School of Kreuzberg asked for the solidarity from children and their parents. | |
| 02:03 | The police expects clashes and riots until the end of next week. | |
| 02:10 | We are BILD, and we deliver your news on YouTube. | |
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Video transcript #2:
| 00:07 | Eviction at Liebigstraße 34. | |
| 00:13 | A rare insight… | |
| 00:20 | Here you see a doorway that normally leads to the staircase of the building. | |
| 00:26 | The door has been barricaded. Several different layers have been added over the years. | |
| 00:30 | Here is a second steel covering, and behind it you see concrete. | |
| 00:36 | The doorway was barricaded with concrete, so the task forces had to choose another entry point. | |
| 00:42 | When you climb through here now, you’ll see the ceiling is right above you | |
| 00:45 | and there are sharp edges here. Not that you could get stuck on them somehow, | |
| 00:49 | so if you want to hold on, be careful. | |
| 00:52 | I’ll go first and show you. | |
| 00:55 | Oopsy daisy, and there you have it. | |
| 00:59 | One of the last leftist strongholds. —So you had to break through here? —Exactly. | |
| 01:04 | The “housing project” has existed for 30 years. | |
| 01:12 | [Sign] Revolutionaries out on May 1st! Berlin 2020 | |
| 01:16 | The rental contract expired in 2018. | |
| 01:20 | What you see here is a trapdoor. It was closed and actually secured | |
| 01:24 | with a metal crossbar that extended through the wall. | |
| 01:28 | The door is assembled with steel beams and is extremely heavy. | |
| 01:33 | The task force had to work with hydraulics from below while at the same time | |
| 01:37 | using a pulley from above to open the door. | |
| 01:40 | Owners were against gentrification. —As you can see yourself, | |
| 01:43 | it is filled up to here with old furniture, bulky waste, and concrete, | |
| 01:46 | so that it would have been almost fanciful for the forces to get through. | |
| 01:52 | It is still unclear what will happen to the building. | |
| 01:55 | The surrounding neighborhood has already been renovated. |
Get them out of there right now !!, this people are bumps Antifa ., living there illegally!!, and looks so filthy , disgusting , hard to believe this is in Germany..
It is funny:
They needed 2500 (yes TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED!!!) Police officers for Liebig 34
but they needed only THREE Police officers for the Reichstag.
Either the Nazis are no threat or they obey orders better.