Football tournament for refugees: dispute over university property in Berlin

Football tournament for refugees: dispute over university property in Berlin

The property with some bushes still serves as a parking lot on the area on Thielallee 63 in Berlin-Dahlem, which is between 4,000 and 5000 square meters. The Senate's plans provide to build a container village for 260 refugees there. This decision has led to protests, especially at the Free University, since the university actually wants to build a building for teaching and research.

The university leadership and the President Günter Ziegler stated that they had learned from the Senate plans from the media and were not involved in the decision-making. Nevertheless, they are fundamentally ready to support refugees. The university pointed out that from 2023 it would need the area for your own construction work and suggested that it was only a few hundred meters away, instead of the Bundesanstalt für Rachchienstäutz.

The Senate's refugee representative, Albrecht Broemme, emphasized that the accommodation of refugees on the fallow's fallow property should not be a delay in the planned university construction measures. At the end of March, the Senate decided to build 16 other container villages to accommodate refugees in Berlin. This measure is part of a larger plan, since the need for living space for refugees in the previous emergency shelters such as the airports Tegel and Tempelhof is still high.

The planned locations for the new container villages focus mainly in the eastern part of the city, including four in Lichtenberg, three in Pankow and two in Treptow-Köpenick. Despite the announcement of other measures, there are already efforts in some districts, such as Steglitz-Zehlendorf, to prevent the structure of refugee accommodation. This has led to discussions and criticism, especially at institutions such as the Free University that received the allegation of the lack of support for refugees. The planned establishment of the container village on the unigain area in Berlin-Dahlem not only seems to bring structural challenges, but also reveals tensions between the needs of the refugees and the interests of educational institutions.