Hafenstrasse:fight for Hamburg's occupied houses

Since the early 1980s, the squatted houses on Hamburger Hafenstrasse have been a symbol of the squatter movement. After lengthy discussions, the Hamburg Parliament decides on February 15, 1995 to sell the squats. In December, the deal is sealed - and the situation is finally settled:For around two million marks, the houses go to the "Alternative am Elbufer" cooperative, which was founded specifically for this purpose. The story of a sometimes violent conflict - and its unusual solution.

It begins completely unspectacularly in the fall of 1981:some Hamburg students and autonomists decide to occupy vacant apartments on Hafenstrasse and Bernhard-Nocht-Strasse. Until now they were normal tenants there, because there was a flat-rate contract with the student union. The city is now planning to demolish it. It owns the buildings through the municipal housing association SAGA. It is the prelude to years of house-to-house warfare that has made Hamburg's Hafenstrasse known nationwide and repeatedly made headlines.

Insidious occupation:"It was about saving the houses"

The conflict revolves around a total of twelve houses, built around 1900, with decorative facades and a view of the Elbe. However, the buildings at the port between the Reeperbahn and Landungsbrücken are completely run down and in need of renovation. "It started very slowly back then," recalls Rasmus Gerlach, documentary filmmaker and onlooker of the events, shortly after his film "Hafenstraße im Fluss" was released in 2010. "The real occupation only took place during a New Year's Eve celebration. The previous residents decided to extend their claim to the entire area because it was foreseeable that it would otherwise be demolished. The aim was to save the houses."

Residents demand self-government instead of demolition

The illegal residents are actually only noticed in the spring of 1982. SAGA immediately files a criminal complaint and has the houses cleared by the police. But less than two days later, the buildings are "repaired" again. In an open letter to the then Senator for Building, Volker Lange (SPD), the squatters demand the "right to self-government" in order to preserve the houses. An official report confirms that the costs of maintaining them are significantly lower than those of new buildings, but the city wants to keep demolishing some of the houses.

A year-long tug-of-war begins:the Hamburg Senate repeatedly wants to vacate the houses and have them demolished, while the residents are demanding a usage contract for all houses. But all negotiations initially fail. In 1983, the residents were given a temporary lease, but conflicts continued. The police clear apartments, solidarity demos end with sometimes violent riots.

"Chaos Sightseeing" on Hafenstrasse

Disputes flare up again and again over the years. For some Hamburgers, Hafenstrasse almost seems like a legal vacuum that inspires fear:you watch it from a safe distance and shake your head. Harbor tours take the row of houses into the tourist program - "chaos sightseeing" from afar. The mayor of the Hanseatic city at the time, Klaus von Dohnanyi (SPD), later described Hafenstraße as "a wound in the city".

Street battles and threats of demolition

This "wound" made a name for itself throughout Germany, and Hafenstrasse became the most famous house facade of the 1980s. It becomes a magnet for punks, alternative and dropouts. The creatively painted houses with symbols such as the black, red and gold banana as a parody of the state, the black cat on a red star and the inscription "No power for nobody" are intended to symbolize the desire for freedom. But the Hafenstraße also stands for brute force - both on the part of the state and on the part of the residents:street battles, arrests, house searches, renewed threats of demolition, suspected RAF connections and barricade fights.

End of 1986:The situation escalates

At the end of 1986, the confrontation between the police and the occupiers reached a preliminary climax. After several street battles, 12,000 people march through downtown Hamburg on December 20th. "Solidarity with Hafenstrasse. No evacuation, no demolition. Stop police terror" are the slogans of the hour. Hundreds of black hooded autonomists face hundreds of police officers ready for action, equipped with helmets and batons.

The situation escalated, there were serious arguments and many were injured. On December 22, the NDR reported in Hamburg Aktuell:"A baton attack and tear gas by the police at a time when the potentially militant part of the demonstration was also peaceful. All participants felt that this was a breach of the agreements."

Senate threatens eviction

"We all had the feeling that there would be deaths if they vacate now," says documentary filmmaker Gerlach. It is an extremely dangerous deadlock between squatters and state power. In 1987 the conflict continued to smolder. In May, the Senate rejected an offer by the patron and social historian Jan Philipp Reemtsma to take over the houses for the symbolic price of one mark and thus pull the city out of the conflict. When the SPD parliamentary group leader at the time, Henning Voscherau, declared the negotiations on a lease agreement had failed in November 1987 and again threatened to evict, the residents got ready for house-to-house fighting:They installed steel doors, barricaded windows and secured the roofs with razor wire . The pirate radio station "Radio Hafenstraße" heats up the atmosphere and calls for the district and the city center to be occupied.

Dohnanyi "pledges" his office

In return, Interior Senator Alfons Pawelczyk has thousands of police officers working together. A peaceful solution hardly seems achievable anymore. Hamburg's mayor, Klaus von Dohnanyi, took an unusual path - even against the will of his own party:on November 17, 1987, he "pledged" his office and gave his "political word of honour" that there would be a contractual solution for the residents , if the illegal roadblocks are dismantled - with success:after a 24-hour ultimatum, the barricades fall. The clearing of Hafenstraße does not take place. On November 19, the city and residents sign a 22-page lease agreement to use the houses. Dohnanyi is honored with the Theodor Heuss Medal for this "exemplary contribution to pacification and conflict resolution".

1995:Founding of a cooperative

After that, there are always minor frictions, but there is no major escalation between the residents and the city. In 1995, the city of Hamburg finally sold the houses to a specially founded cooperative called "Alternative am Elbufer". In the following years, the residents take on a large part of the necessary renovation work. In the meantime, it has become quiet around Hafenstrasse, according to Gerlach "the only attempt at utopia by the Federal Left that has survived to this day." The houses are now considered to be a particularly colorful and alternative quarter in the trendy district of St. Pauli. Without the 1981 cast, none of that would be left.