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Organising Labor in Tech: The Story of the N26 Workers Council

An interview with a tech worker about the struggle to form N26’s first workers council

Negro Matapacos
12/07/2022

In August of 2020 after Covid hit, most employees in Germany who could were working from home. That past spring, many employers had reluctantly sent workers to their houses and apartments, fearing a Covid outbreak at the workplace. Even though the spread of disease and the restrictions were relaxing, it was rare to find an occupied office building during those months, except for at the mobile bank N26, where life had continued in the office for the customer service employees, as if Covid didn’t even exist.

Normally under these kinds of conditions, employees in Germany would be able to contact their workers council (Betriebsrat) – a group of employees elected to negotiate with management. Some of these workers councils are associated with unions like ver.di, and others are set up within companies themselves. However, at N26, no such thing existed. And furthermore, employees were scared of speaking out for fear of losing their jobs in the middle of a pandemic. Nevertheless, a group got together and decided that enough was enough. The workers wanted representation, and supported by the weight of German labor law, they were going to go for it.

Only three people are needed to start a workers council, and although extremely common in Germany, no tech company in the country had one. Naturally, the N26 management wasn’t happy about the idea, and launched an all-out war to stop the employees from forming one. The Left Berlin spoke to an employee of N26 (name has been changed), who was there from the start.

The Left Berlin: So for someone who has no idea what’s going on, what happened?

N26: When Covid kicked off and every office was getting sent home, the N26 management refused to send customer service home. We basically did a bit of direct action, we sent around a survey that said, ‘Do you feel safe in the office?’ and of course the answer was no. I was the only one of my friends who was in any sort of office, all of my other friends were working from home at that point.

TLB: How did talk of a workers council start? What happened from there?

N26: I’d heard when I’d started that there were always rumors of a workers council but the way it worked at N26 at the time, you made it past a year, and then two years is obviously when you become permanent. Most people got fired before two years because they didn’t want a lot of permanent contracts. They had this ethos that they were a startup even though we were a fully fledged bank. And they were like ‘We’re a startup we’re go getters,’ and it’s like no, you’re a bank now, you have to get out of this startup mindset. We’re not just like in a WeWork and messing around with nerf guns, this is a fucking bank now. So Covid hit and customer service demanded that we get sent home, but they would only send people who’d been working there over 6 months home. And then the talk of the workers council fully kicked off and thankfully there was a lot of desire for it.

But the problem was, we lived in a constant state of fear of losing our jobs because they could say, ’Oh you want a workers council? Well, you’re not worked here more than a year so good luck you’re gone.’ Lots of people didn’t run for it, lots of people were even scared to comment on slack in support of a workers council, because really everybody was in a constant state of fear of losing their jobs, especially during Covid. Nobody wanted to rock the boat anymore than it was.

TLB: So did you get help?

N26: When you want to run an electoral board, a union can step in and help you, and advise you. The company has to pay for all of this, and union reps have a right that, if there’s one union member at a company, a union rep can come and just enter and just chat with you. You know, German labor laws, there’s no preventing unions from doing what they want to do.

There are two branches at N26, there’s N26 operations Gmbh: legal, and then N26 operations: anti-financial crime, customer service, complaints, all that kind of stuff. So we needed to form 2 separate workers councils for each of those entities. 3 people from each who wanted to be on the electoral board put themselves forward. The electoral board arranges the actual elections for the people who want to run the workers council. It’s so much bureaucracy, it’s so German.

The 3 people at each entity, I honestly don’t know how they did it but they were just so sick of how they were being treated, that they just didn’t give a fuck about possibly losing their jobs. They were like, we’re doing this and it’s happening. So, the ball starts rolling and the management lose their fucking shit and slack just becomes a war zone. And I specifically remember there was a guy who was legal council or something – he came onto slack and wrote this, not joking, essay, saying that unions are now going to start meddling in the company and slowing down the growth, they’re only for miners and factory workers and it’s an archaic structure and we don’t need them and they’re corrupt.

TLB: And there was no union representation at N26 before this at all?

N26: There were union members but even a talk of a union would be dangerous. You know the way startups are…the whole thing was ‘It will slow down our growth’, but really they wanted to chuck people really quickly, they wanted to be able to say:

‘Oh you don’t need labor rights, we have pizza parties.’

The classic.

TLB: Was that pretty much how all of management reacted?

N26: The people who were masters in law and working as lawyers or people who were engineers were saying well, we can pick and choose our jobs, we can do whatever we want, we don’t need a workers council, completely missing the point that like, most of the people in customer service or the lower rungs of operations can’t really pick and choose jobs, that it didn’t really work like that. And what a lot of them didn’t seem to grasp was like, it’s happening, there’s no stopping it. And that’s what shows how nobody really knew what the fuck a workers council was about, because they thought they could stop it by using a lot of people to say, ‘Let’s have a meeting about this, we’ll figure this out,’ and it’s like no, it’s happening. We’re going to set up the electoral board, the electoral board wants to hold meetings in a beer hall.

TLB: How did the meeting go?

N26: Ver.di ran that. And the reason they ran that was because three staff from N26 operations Gmbh who were due to run the meeting had a restraining order put on them by the management. This emergency restraining order – I’m pretty sure it’s for like abuse victims, cause you can go to court and get this restraining order and it’s immediately implemented and then it goes to court later. So it’s for people who are in abusive relationships, to get out, so it’s really fucked up that a company was using that.

TLB: The three people couldn’t come near other employees?

N26: Ya, they literally couldn’t hold the meeting, it was fucking crazy.

TLB: The unions stepped in then?

N26: So three staff receive emergency restraining orders, preventing them from holding the meeting. So the meetings are cancelled. And that was on the 12^th of August, 2020. And then late, late at night when nobody was in, it ticked around until 11 pm on the 12^th, midnight on the 13^th, Ver.di step in and are like ‘We’re going to hold a meeting. We’ll tell you what to do because you have no idea. You can’t do this yourself.’ We went to Oliver Hauser, who represents all of the tech people for ver.di, I don’t think he sleeps, and he sat there explaining everything. There were some press outside but not much.

TLB: But the media picked it up eventually, right?

N26: All of this was being leaked by somebody to the media, what the founders were doing, and it caused a fucking shit storm, because labor rights in Germany? People aren’t going to be happy. And tech magazines were writing about it because they were like holy shit there’re a tech company and there’s about to be a fucking workers council (it was the first time in Germany), no one’s seen this before. That’s why it was such a massive deal. Then there’s this twitter account, N26 workers, getting information and putting it out on Twitter. In customer service we were getting calls, emails chats, people saying like ‘Fuck the bosses, up the workers, don’t let them do this to you, you’ll get your representation.’

TLB: And the second workers council meeting?

N26: That was on the 13^th, on the 14^th. That was when N26 Gmbh, the legal side of things was meant to be their meeting. However another emergency restraining order was taken out, this time against ver.di and the founders were posting on slack saying, ‘A union has tried to interfere with the workers council election, we obviously want this to happen but they are going to interfere, and they’re not going to represent you correctly.’ But if they wanted it to happen why did they get an emergency restraining order against the staff who were just trying to let it happen? They couldn’t have made it any worse, I don’t know what they were thinking.

They got an emergency restraining order against ver.di then, on the 14^th, but then IG Metall, who represent Volkswagen, they were the union who just got the 4 day work week for Volkswagen last year – a very good union – they stepped in to run the meeting, and that went into the press. And this was like celebrity drama. Everybody was writing about it, it was snowballing. If the management had just let it happen, you probably wouldn’t have heard about it. It would have just happened, and it would have been like ‘Wow, a tech company set up a workers council, isn’t that crazy?,’ but they made it so much worse. They couldn’t have done it any worse. Unless they literally brought in strike breakers to beat us up, they couldn’t have made it any worse.

And I remember, this is what was so crazy about the second day, when N26 Gmbh had their meeting, that’s where IG Metal ran it – someone called the cops, saying that it wasn’t compliant with Covid regulations. Ya, someone, called the cops. And people were suggesting on slack, ‘Oh maybe the cops just came to do a random spot check!’ Like that happens, like cops were just going around doing random spot checks. It was fucking insane. The cops come in, take a look at the place, see that it’s perfect and then leave immediately. And then I remember somebody commented on slack saying, ‘I sit here in the office beside my colleague with no mask on, closer than we were sitting in the beer hall. So if it was dangerous to be there, why are we even in the office?’

What was so funny about that meeting, Oliver Hauser said ‘Hey listen, the management are going to try to offer you alternative representation. Don’t fall for it. This is what happens. It happens any time someone wants to form a workers council.’ And literally within a day, the management are offering the Global Employee Representation Board and saying a workers council will only represent our entity in Germany. It won’t represent our entity in Austria, or Barcelona, or New York.

It’s like, yes, because it’s a German thing. It’s not legal to represent the Austrian office, it’s not legal to represent the Barcelona office. If they have an equivalent, set it up, full support, but it doesn’t make a difference. But the Global Employee Representation Board, what’s the difference? No protection under German law. A union can’t help them, it’s not protected in any sort of way. So the elections got run for that in December 2020, I have no idea who was on it, I genuinely haven’t a clue, and it got disbanded last month.

In the end, the workers were successful and N26 now has functional workers councils that can advocate for employee rights. And other tech companies in Berlin and around Germany are starting workers councils as well, including at Hello Fresh, Flink, and at Amazon. If you’re interested in learning more, or getting involved in organizing your own workplace, the Berlin Tech Workers Coalition is a great place to start.

Find out more about the Berlin Tech Workers Coalition.

Johnson’s Legacy: Misconduct, Death, and NHS in Crisis

Prime minister Boris Johnson should have resigned a long time ago, but whoever in his party replaces him will be no better for the NHS or for working people.

Holly Johnston
11/07/2022

by NHS Nurse Holly Johnston and Keep Our NHS Public’s Tom Griffiths.

Keep Our NHS Public welcomes the resignation of Boris Johnson while condemning his decision to hang on until a new leader is appointed. We say he must go now.

In his blithely defiant resignation speech, Johnson said of being pushed out by his own party, ‘them’s the breaks’ – but this won’t cut it for the grieving families whose relatives died unnecessarily during the pandemic, those struggling to heat their homes in the coming winter, the NHS staff using foodbanks, or the patients languishing on waiting lists for urgently needed care.

Johnson’s self-serving, ideological muddle of a speech displayed zero self-awareness. He went on to say, ‘I’m immensely proud of what we’ve done, getting us all (sic) through the pandemic’ and later, ‘I’d like to thank the NHS, [which] helped extend my leadership.’

His statements are wildly at odds with the experience of ordinary people throughout the country and despite his attempts to sell his leadership as a success, we will remember his legacy as consistently getting the big calls wrong in relation to the NHS and the health of the population.

“After hearing Johnson’s speech today, it’s clear that he struggles to comprehend the reality of his impact on Britain. At a time when poverty and the cost of living continues to rise, he spoke of all the grand achievements he has made while in power. But Johnson’s premiership will be remembered for its hypocrisy. He enjoyed making the rules but refused to follow them himself.” – Alia Butt, NHS Psychologist and psychotherapist (Keep Our NHS Public NHS Staff Voices co-founder)

We’ve been critical of the Conservative Government’s disastrous record on the NHS for years prior to Johnson’s tenure in number 10. It’s nonetheless striking that under his stewardship we’ve seen the biggest crisis in staffing, waiting times and the passing into law of some the most dangerous NHS legislation in the Health and Care Act. Not to mention that, even as the 6^th richest nation on the planet, for a significant period of time the UK had the worst death toll per capita in the world. Surely, this kind of ‘getting us through the pandemic’, is to be lamented rather than celebrated.

Contempt for NHS Staff and Patients

Throughout, Boris Johnson has shown only contempt for NHS staff. Wages and conditions have consistently deteriorated during his leadership. Staff have been used as political fodder at a time when they are struggling to make ends meet. It’s not for nothing we’ve seen the formation of huge grassroots campaigns like ‘NHS Workers Say No!’ in response to the misery faced by NHS workers in dangerously understaffed workplaces, and insulting pay offers for health and care workers.

“The NHS is now facing its biggest crisis ever, with underfunding, 110,000 staff vacancies, bed cuts, ambulance services collapsing, record high waiting lists now over six million, and a massive maintenance backlog of around £9 million. With life expectancy stalled and poverty and inequality increasing, population health continues to suffer from the adverse effects of overall economic mismanagement.” – Dr John Puntis (co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public)

The Real Covid Legacy

“The People’s Covid Inquiry a year ago uncovered serious malpractice by the Prime Minister and his Government in their handling of the pandemic. Our report entitled Misconduct in Public Office was submitted to the police as a matter for criminal investigation. A major factor was a grave lack of preparedness and consequent fatal delay. It is of interest to note that part of the early mindset encompassed herd immunity and letting matters take their own course. Boris has shown equal disregard and disrespect for his own party in blaming his departure on the herd instinct!” – Michael Mansfield QC, Chair of the People’s Covid Inquiry (Feb-Dec 2021)

Throughout the pandemic, the government has claimed time and again they’ve done a good job, when in reality we’ve seen countless avoidable deaths, failed private contracts for their friends and big party donors, inadequate supply, quality and guidance for PPE and a failed track and trace system. Theirs is a legacy of parties during lockdown while NHS staff went without seeing their families and dying patients were unable to have visitors.

In a pompous, misrepresentative (and possibly libelous) resignation letter addressed to the prime minister, Conservative Nadhim Zahawi MP, stated:

“I am heartbroken, that [Johnson] hasn’t listened and that he is now undermining the incredible achievements of this Government at this late hour. No one will forget getting Brexit done, keeping a dangerous antisemite out of No 10, our handling of covid and our support for Ukraine in its hour of need.”

After all the sleaze and scandals, the alleged sexual assault, the barefaced lies over ‘partygate’ and the nearly 200,000 deaths from Covid, that anyone in Government can frame the Conservatives’ record in a positive light is in itself ‘incredible’ and shows yet again how out of touch they are and how desperately we need change. Even Johnson’s critics, now seeing him as an electoral liability, are blind to the devastation and destruction their party has caused. Zahawi is right about one thing however – we will not forget the Government’s gross mis-handling of the Covid pandemic. We are still awaiting a final response from the Metropolitan police over what our lawyers believe to have been ‘misconduct in public office’ demonstrated by Johnson and his cabinet throughout the crisis.

Waiting Times at Record High

“Our NHS is on its knees. Millions are suffering whilst left on waiting lists. A result of 12 years of Tory government. Changing the man at the top won’t change that.” – Dr Sonia Adesara (Keep Our NHS Public)

As we’ve reported elsewhere, one of the key areas the Government’s NHS policy is failing is the appalling waits for ambulances in England. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimated that there were at least 4,519 excess deaths in England in 2020-21 as a result of overcrowding and stays of 12 hours or longer in emergency departments. A report by Association of Ambulance Chief Executives showed that the monthly average number of patients with handover delayed >60 minutes in 2021 had almost doubled to 15,500 (the target for handover time is <15 minutes). The West Midlands Ambulance Service is now predicting it will no longer have the capacity to respond to emergency calls by August this year.

Will the next conservative prime minister make things any better? We can certainly hope so, but it seems highly unlikely, particularly since some of those who have consistently defended Johnson are positioning to stand as candidates. One of them is ex-merchant banker Sajid Javid who gave a present to the NHS on its recent 74^th birthday by resigning as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, but who lied about the building of 48 hew hospitals and also claimed the NHS did not need any more money.

The Health and Care Act

“Rather than seeking solutions to these problems, there has only been an obsessive preoccupation with structural re-organisation as exemplified by the problematic Health and Care Act, and an attempt to put the blame on overworked and underpaid staff.” – Dr John Puntis

The Health and Care Act deliberately breaks up the NHS and facilitates the spread of private interests. It does nothing to address the current state of emergency the NHS and will drastically worsen this by imposing costly and disruptive reconfiguration. The discharge of patients without a care plan has now been legalised, endangering their ongoing management and safety. The Act allows the Secretary of State to interfere early to determine local reconfigurations including hospital closures, thwarting public consultation, and weakening the say that local authorities and councillors have on NHS plans, further enlarging the democratic deficit and lack of accountability.

Years of hard campaigning will be needed to undo the damage done to the NHS by this wrecking ball legislation. Again, this is the legacy of Boris Johnson and the Conservative party. What the population needs, and what the NHS needs is not just a new Prime Minister but an entirely new Government with new policies designed to return the NHS to its founding principles and promote population wellbeing by tackling the social determinants of health.

What Now?

While we welcome Boris Johnson going, we must remember the Conservative Government’s ideological attack on a publicly provided NHS remains and must be resisted.

“We demand much more from our politicians in the coming months in terms of righting these many wrongs. The Johnson legacy will forever by epitomised by the Covid memorial wall and the blatant misconduct of the prime minister and his cabinet and officials while holding public office.” – Dr John Puntis

“We cannot trust this government to rescue our NHS. That work will have to be undertaken by the many health campaigns across the country, many of whom have come together under the banner of the SOS NHS campaign. Instead of waiting on politicians to sort something out, we appeal to ordinary people everywhere to make your voices heard. It is our NHS and we have to use this moment to make sure our voices are heard.” – Mike Forster (National Chair of Health Campaigns Together)

“We call on the politicians and parties in opposition to vigorously and vocally expose the many lies that have been told, to stand up for public services, whether in health, care, education and transport, and to rebuild morale and pay justice for the public servants who work for us. Join with campaigners to help get rid of this government and to rebuild the NHS we need – funded to be stronger, safer, back 100% in public hands and available to everyone.” – Tony O’Sullivan (co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public)

While NHS Campaigners and healthcare workers will be glad to see the back of Johnson and some of his cronies, we need the opposition to call for an integrated, publicly owned health and care system with a restorative pay rise to ensure the future of the service, and to stand shoulder to shoulder with working people trying to better their pay and conditions.

Holly Johnston is an NHS Nurse based in Sheffield and is a founding member of NHS Workers Say No! Tom Griffiths is the Head of Campaigns at Keep Our NHS Public

Surviving Trump, anti-militarism and the Ukraine war

Discussion with radical magazine illustrator Brian Stauffer

Karl Cross
10/07/2022

If a picture speaks more than a thousand words, there are few people who have challenged people more than Brian Stauffer and his 300 images. Both in top US news magazines like ‘Time’ and ‘The New Yorker’, and in Germany’s ‘Der Spiegel’, Stauffer has illustrated concepts behind the news in his colourful way for over 30 years. His unique style captured what many people felt and put into colour the most vile right-wing populists of our age. In particular, Russian President Vladimir Putin and US ex-president Donald Trump. A strong critic of war and police violence who never ceases to point out abuse of authority, the Arizona-born artist’s work is on display at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation until August.

In Berlin, Stauffer spoke of his ‘frustration’ over far right narratives that had taken over his native United States since the arrival of Trump. Stauffer could not even believe such a narrative was possible: “In 2015, the year before the 2016 election, I was in Bogota, doing a series of workshops with students there and they were saying, ‘How can this be how can this be?’ I kept telling them, don’t worry, it’ll never happen. Cooler heads, smarter minds, will prevail – this guy will be found out. And I was just proven wrong in every possible way. So could it happen again? Yeah. It could. And will we survive it? I think so.”

He explained how, the USA was polarized by political forces beyond any mainstream control. This allows Trump followers to now attempt suppressing all critique of history.

“Somehow, someone made a false equivalence of freedom of speech with intolerance and bigotry and then to take it even one step further, used it to inhibit others rights as an individual. It’s just a very slippery slope. When you’re surrounded by figures that have abandon the restraint of shame, the potential is unlimited.”

Trump’s appointments at the Supreme Court continue to strengthen this change of perspective across the country, even as the divisions fester. Even the Black Lives Matter protests were politicized, to the point that the far right narrative considered any discussion of the past as somehow unpatriotic.

“Currently, there is a trend to want to not look back on the history of the genocide of Native Americans and the 400 years of slavery and that by somehow looking back, we are dishonouring all that has been done before,” says Stauffer. “And it’s that kind of hyper-simplicity that plagues the public discourse right now between the two very angry sides in our country. And as angry as I am about it, and as frustrating as it is, the rage itself has to be tempered because very quickly the messages become hyperbole and overstatements, and they become a different form of lies.

“What makes it particularly upsetting is that the Supreme Court is supposed to be an institution that rises above the politics of the day, so it is not based on trust or a reflection of the culture as a whole. People stopped believing that there is any real truth, or that there were any parents in the room, so to speak. That was what was the most devastating thing about his administration. And then the Republicans who benefit from it knew exactly what they were doing. They were doing a deal with the devil, which they now realise they can’t undo.”

The Trump factor

Stauffer draws his cartoons to remove the blindfold from the delusions people create from the world. But this Trump-inspired trend to demean his work really challenged his art-form, his very career, and that of thousands of journalists around the world. Working within an establishment that somehow reverses itself, it is often very difficult to say with words what Stauffer puts across with pictures. That might have changed somewhat with Trump’s full-on assault on the US media. Many in the media were for the first time forced to adjust to an unreal situation where the politician was turning on his critical audience.

“After the first six months of his term, I had a near nervous breakdown because of the depression,” Stauffer admits. “It was a very dangerous time as I was completely disillusioned with what I thought the world was and my faith in it.

“I’d go and see people who worked at the New York Times, and they looked like they had been in prison camps. They were gaunt from the strain of not only working 24 hours a day reporting on a new outrage every other news cycle; but also seeing that the work they were doing was being discredited and stripped of its value because someone was saying it was all fake. Of course they knew it was not fake.”

Trump’s refusal to rebuke Saudi Arabia for its alleged murder of reporter Jamal Khashoggi brought this situation to a head. It challenged the traditional role of the press as the fourth estate of the United States. “Well, will anybody really know?” Trump had asked rhetorically when challenged about the journalist’s death. In response, Stauffer stayed up for two and a half days to illustrate a series of 18 pieces about Khashoggi’s legacy, ensuring that no-one would ever forget the courageous reporter who stood up to Saudi Arabia’s nefarious human rights record.

Breaking the infallible

This frustration and anger pushed Stauffer to make public figures more accessible to the general public, to show them public figures were anything but infallible. This fallability only increased under Trump, who Stauffer saw as trying to politicize the pandemic, leading to over a million US deaths. He pointed out that one of his inspirations was none other than the German John Heartfield, whose visual work mocking Hitler forced him eventually to flee the Nazis to England.

“One of the things that I loved the most about John Heartfield is that he he was able to take these images and the way that the public looks at -let’s say a news photo of an authoritative figure – when we kind of consider them untouchable maybe in some way. And then you turn around and you make them touchable,” says the illustrator.

“You show the weakness within the person that is supposed to show that they are perfect or out of reach. And to me it’s very exciting that an individual can take an image for a metaphor and apply it and put that image out and nothing can take it away. What I try to do is to distill complex issues down to something, maybe an essence of it that isn’t necessarily the entire truth.

About the production process, Stauffer points out that it is not so much about the tools but the ideas, even preferring to use a mouse than a digital pencil, for example.

“So there are times when I’m using only only little scans or drawings that will make it into my work,” he says. “I have a number of textures from old magazines that I’m using just the texture as kind of a raw material and I’m duplicating it and cloning it. I use the computer as a very blunt instrument. I still work with with a mouse instead of with a digital pencil and tablet which usually surprises my students.

“They look at me like a dinosaur, which I guess I kind of am technologically but I use the computer in a way that a draughtsman would use a knife, glue and an airbrush. As much as I would love to say here’s what I do every time, it changes so much for every image. And what that has done is that the people now come to me more for the ideas that I’m bringing to a subject than distillation of a concept of a complex story.”

War: What is it good for?

Although Stauffer’s exhibition coincides with the most high-profile European conflict since World War II, he did not plan it this way. In fact, he started organizing the exhibition a year ago, and could not believe that we would now once again be facing the same nuclear holocaust scenario as during the Cold War. “Clearly I’m not happy – but what amazing timing!” he says. “I mean, it’s nice to have these messages because maybe people are looking with a little more intent these days.” However, two of the pieces at this exhibition were made expressly for the Ukraine war – one which was published in ‘Der Spiegel’ and the other to US independent publication ‘The Nation’. That the graphic artist has never diluted his anti-militaristic stance is a testament to his values and his desire to halt injustice and violence.

“For me, what’s very difficult is understanding the criticism that anyone who claims to be against war is naive and doesn’t understand the dark forces within the world and that, when left to those devices, they would be the first to be slaughtered,” says Stauffer. “It’s a very simple way of dismissing the idea of questioning why we use the destruction of human life as a solution – whether you are the victor or the terrorists, or the victim seeking revenge, or for any justification.”

He addresses the idea of war in several illustrations, one which ironically depicts a peace sign in the shadow of a drone. Even though the West has supported Ukraine’s self-defence using drones, he says that some people even thought it meant that drones helped to keep the peace.

“What I was actually talking about was the sick irony of having to kill somebody in order to make peace,” he remarks.

“I think the taking of life is wrong. Personally, I just do. My oldest child, Andy, when they were maybe four, came to me and saw that I was working on a project. And they said to me, that if we were trying to make friends with them, why do we drop bombs on them.

“You’re gonna say, ‘oh, it’s much more complicated’. Well, the truth is, it’s a very clear distillation of the contradiction and although it’s uncomfortable to face, the truth is that to kill someone in the guise of making peace or pledging forgiveness is the ultimate hypocrisy!”

Using €9 train tickets to discover unseen Germany

The Berlin LINKE Internationals used the €9 train ticket to organize a group visit to the DDR’s first planned town. Further trips are planned.

Emily Baumgartner
09/07/2022

During one of the first memorable Berlin summer scorchers of 2022, a dozen adventurous Berliners met at Hauptbahnhof due east to explore Eisenhüttenstadt. Eisenhüttenstadt, echt? Ja, stimmt! Not only is Eisenhüttenstadt a remarkable relic of the DDR, but also qualifies as a “free trip” within the parameters of the glorious €9 ticket. Our trip east felt especially unconventional that day, compared to most who vacated the city desperate for a refreshing dip to cool off.

Our trip began at the tourist center, where we were offered brochures in Deutsch and English, echt! We navigated the town by way of this brochure, paying a visit to the city’s many landmarks. Exploring the city on foot, we experienced the intention behind the city’s “community-centered” DDR design, despite its empty streets and sidewalks. Following reunification in the 1990s, the once state-owned steel works became privatized, unemployment skyrocketed and over time the city’s population pulmeted.

Whilst strolling around the “Iron Hut”, I enjoyed meeting many of the fellow day trip folks. Despite the sweltering heat, this shared experience we now held was refreshing. I was struck by the interesting ways in which these folks sought and discovered this day trip, and their rationale for joining.

I met Linh, a native Australian and discovered we both moved to Berlin around the same time right before the pandemic. Linh joined the trip because “I’ve always had an interest in architecture, particularly architecture from this period. Plus it was a great opportunity to attend a Die Linke event and meet other members after two years of on/off lockdowns.”

“So what made you decide to visit Eisenhüttenstadt today?” I asked Luisa, a native Berliner. Luisa warmly shared, “I talked a lot to my grandmother about the DDR. She grew up there, after being displaced from Pomerania, now Poland, when she was six. Exploring Eisenhüttenstadt in a leftist context was the perfect experience for me, to see her history through my eyes, but also to understand the beautiful sides of the former socialist state. The town gave me an idea of what the community might have been like in the DDR.”

Eisenhüttenstadt was originally known as Stalinstadt. Photo: Phil Butland

The museum “Utopie und Alltag” was a particular highlight of ours. We were given a warm greeting by the passionate staff and guided upstairs to enjoy the many rooms of DDR artifacts which helped to paint a picture of what life was like living in a socialist town. Turns out even Mr. Tom Hanks has paid a visit to the town several times, enchanted by the city’s historic socialist charm.

Museum “Utopie und Alltag”. Photo: Kristof Trakal

All in all, our first day trip was a success! Exercise your €9 ticket before it expires and join us for our upcoming trip to Dessau to visit the Bauhaus buildings, Sunday July 10th.

Following the Dessau trip, we’re also considering visiting Beeskow, home of the DDR’s largest art archive, Buckow, where Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel lived, and the former concentration camp of Sachsenhausen. Subscribe to the theleftberlin Newsletter to receive more information about future trips.