University resistance: Container village instead of a new building?

University resistance: Container village instead of a new building?

The property on Thielallee 63 in Berlin-Dahlem is the focus of a controversy, since the Senate plans to build a container village for 260 refugees on the fallow area. These plans encounter resistance, especially at the Free University, since the university wants to use the area for the construction of new teaching and research institutions. The President of the FU, Andrea Güttner, emphasized that the area was not suitable for refugee accommodation and complained that the university management was not included in the decisions.

The refugee coordinator of Berlin, Albrecht Broemme, defends the planned accommodation of the refugees on the university site and emphasizes that this should not be permanent blockage for the expansion of the FU. The Senate had decided at the end of March to build another 16 container villages for refugees in Berlin in order to alleviate the acute lack of living space. The locations of the new container villages mainly focus on the eastern part of the city, which leads to an tightening of the imbalance.

The planned establishment of a container village in Steglitz-Zehlendorf has led to ridicule on the net, especially due to the resistance of the Free University, which is often perceived as cosmopolitan and tolerant. In this contradiction, critics see discrepancy and describe the behavior of the university as inconsistent. The debate illustrates the challenges of accommodating refugees in Berlin and the tensions between different interest groups in the city.