Berlin squat emptied after 30 years

BERLIN police yesterday evicted squatters from a building that has become a symbol for the city’s antigentrification movement.

More than 1,500 police officers faced off against hundreds of demonstrators outside the dilapidated building covered with graffiti in the Friechrichshain quarter.

Police were called after a group of squatters calling themselves an “anarcho-queer-feminist collective” refused to leave.

Officers had to use chainsaws and crowbars to remove barricades.

Cars were set on fire overnight as protests broke out across the city at the impending eviction. S-bahn train services were interrupted after a station was set alight, and police used water cannons to put out small fires at several locations.

The building, popularly known as “Liebig-34”, has long been a rallying call for Berlin’s far-left and there were fears of violence as police moved in.

But in the event the eviction passed off peacefully. Police entered through an upper floor window and had removed all 57 squatters within an hour.

The building was one of several in the former East Berlin that were taken over by artists from the West in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The status of the squatters was legalised in the years that followed, but in 2008 the building was sold by its heavily indebted owners.

It was sold to a property developer who granted the former squatters a 10-year commercial lease. When the lease expired in 2018 they refused to move out and reverted to squatting.

Berlin has seen extensive anti-gentrification protests in recent years, and last year the city authorities introduced tough new rent controls, including a five-year rent freeze.

“We have secured the building. An expert is currently assessing the individual rooms.

“We will then prepare the handover to the bailiff,” the Berlin police said.

But far-left groups vowed to continue protests, and the slogans “Every eviction has its price” and “Let’s make the eviction a disaster” were circulating on social media.