BERLIN—Banners hanging from apartment windows in what was formerly East Berlin proclaim “This is Karl Marx Allee, not Commerz Allee!” Tenants all over this city, but particularly these days in what used to be the capital of East Germany, are marching, rallying, and flying banners outside their windows to protest attempts by voracious real estate moguls to take their homes and sell them off to wealthy people.
In the eastern part of Berlin, along Karl Marx Allee, the German gentry has its eyes on apartments that were built more than 50 years ago for thousands of working-class people in the massive housing programs launched by the former socialist German Democratic Republic. The seven-to nine-story apartment blocks flank Berlin’s main avenue, named after the German political philosopher who wrote The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.
“Even after the end of the unification in 1990, for the first few years the people living in the apartments along Karl Marx Allee enjoyed low rents compared to what others paid in western parts of the city,” said Victor Grossman, 89, an apartment dweller living on that street today. Back in 1961, Grossman, along with his pregnant young wife and their one child, moved into one of the then-new apartments lining Karl Marx Allee in East Berlin.
Back then the Grossmans, with a combined income of 1,500 marks per month, paid only 114 marks in rent. Now, a widower with one son living elsewhere in Berlin and another living overseas with his family, Grossmann pays 650 Euros per month for that same apartment. His rent is considered extremely low, however, with most of his neighbors paying a lot more.
On Karl Marx Allee and elsewhere in Berlin, those living in apartments bought up by real estate developers can end up losing their homes altogether because they cannot afford the exorbitant rents that will result. Deutsche Wohnen, the largest property developer in Berlin, has purchased 700 apartments along Karl Marx Allee with the aim of turning them into expensive condos.
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