What Merz is keeping quiet about regarding the cityscape
For several weeks now, Germany has been debating a controversial term that is being exploited by politicians to deepen social divisions instead of seeking solutions. The word "cityscape" illustrates how often the mainstream derails debates to pursue political opportunism.
By Bent Erik Scholz
By Bent Erik Scholz
In a certain sense, Friedrich Merz is right: German city centers have changed in recent decades, and this change is an indicator of the direction Germany is heading. But he lies about the reasons, and he's not alone. Large segments of the established federal political establishment, including the AfD, are looking for and finding an easy scapegoat in asylum seekers, whose foreignness is ascribed a potential threat. At times, the image of a horde of poachers roaming our German lands, endangering our women and children and depriving us of our living space, is practically conjured up. This same argument is constantly being pulled out of thin air: Rising crime? It's migrants! Increasing poverty and people on welfare? Migrants! Housing shortage? We're letting in too many people!
What's being kept quiet is that the housing shortage didn't begin in 2015. It's the result of a trend in which too few new apartments have been built in Germany for several years. In 2024, the goal of building 400,000 new apartments was missed by almost half. Due to artificial scarcity, rents have been skyrocketing for years, particularly in major German cities. Something as fundamental as a roof over one's head is becoming increasingly unaffordable, partly because housing companies like Vonovia and LEG, driven by private interests, are pushing up prices and trying to force existing tenants out of old contracts in order to offer new ones at higher prices per square meter.
Homelessness is also rising steadily. This is not only due to the housing shortage, but also to a radical shift in consumer behavior. The retail sector is quietly and steadily dying out. The general shift to e-commerce and online shopping has forced many traditional companies to downsize, if not into bankruptcy, jeopardizing careers and often eliminating good jobs with fair wages. Large corporations like Amazon and Lieferando profit from this, as do chains and franchises that use their growing market dominance to engage in wage dumping just enough to be legally permitted. These companies, which often operate internationally, pay their taxes in other European countries. It is estimated that this results in billions of euros in lost revenue for the treasury each year. This is offset by the working population, who rightly complain about high tax rates and what they perceive as wasteful spending. There is no will to rectify this situation, because keeping these large corporations in the country at all costs is considered more important than the well-being of the majority of the population. It's a form of hidden oligarchy.
The result: inequality is increasing, and purchasing power is shifting. Fewer and fewer people can afford more and more; 10% of Germans own roughly 60-67% of the total net wealth in Germany. At the same time, 15.5% of Germans were at risk of poverty last year, and this figure has been rising in recent years. Cracks are running through German cities. Wealth and poverty exist side by side, yet the canyons between them are growing ever deeper. For decades, homeless people, beggars, and drug addicts have been a common sight not far from the luxury shops on Berlin's Kurfürstendamm; these worlds coexist, yet remain irreconcilable.
After all, why deny it when isolation is made so palatable in every aspect of our lives? Order terminals spare us the embarrassment of speaking to a waiter in a restaurant, online shopping saves us from going out, browsing, and trying things on--and what about the parks? Better to avoid them too, as they are considered dangerous. If anything, it's better to go to a concert for seventy euros among fellow citizens of similar purchasing power, who pose less of a risk than any of the antisocial elements on the street. We isolate the poor and foreigners in their respective ghettos, the rich voluntarily isolate themselves out of distrust of the world, and we always remain at a distance from one another. Even the office, perhaps the most casual and typical meeting place for the average German, is dying out in the age of home office and remote working.
As a result, the cityscape is taking shape as follows: empty streets in industrial parks, a concentration of wealth in a few parts of the city, and a cluster of poverty whose visibility is half-heartedly or coldly addressed through architecture that is hostile to the homeless, but for which no solutions are formulated. Due to overconsumption and the general availability of everything, we are also observing increasing littering. Trash cans overflowing with pizza boxes, plastic packaging, and paper cups, and emaciated people sifting through them for returnable bottles and cans, hoping to find something to use at the supermarket.To be able to buy some rolls for dinner at the market.
According to Friedrich Merz's definition, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this cityscape; it only becomes problematic for him when more and more non-Germans are seen in it. This is not only cynical, but it is also loaded with misanthropic suggestions through dubious, populist insinuations ("Just ask your daughters"), in order to bastardize the very noble impulse to protect women from external attacks by invoking an ethnic hierarchy. And all this for flimsy reasons, because the crime rate in Germany is stagnating despite increasing immigration. While the number of sexual offenses has been significantly higher since the 2016/17 criminal law reform, due to the broadening of the definition and the inclusion of more offenses, it has nevertheless remained constant, even trending downwards.
But let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that the number of crimes had actually exploded due to migration. Then we would have to ask ourselves why crime occurs. It's not enough to simply look at the passports of perpetrators; after all, many who immediately ask about the perpetrator's origin when hearing reports of violent crimes would... It's worth objecting when a possible pattern is suggested based on the fact that sexual offenses are primarily committed by men. Not all men, but potentially all migrants? There must be something else at play.
The main factors contributing to crime have always been economic pressure, exclusion, and frustration with one's own (potentially precarious) living conditions--in short, poverty and isolation, for example, in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Those who are ghettoized and grow up in an environment of violence and drug-related crime are shaped by this. Someone born into a prosperous family is unlikely to steal cigarettes from Aldi. Someone fleeing a war and arriving in a country that, while offering relatively good survival, also constantly reminds them that they don't really belong and are initially viewed with suspicion--will likely find it difficult to feel like part of this society. Furthermore, migrants have often been, and continue to be, limited in their opportunities to gain a foothold in Germany and achieve upward mobility. What they can achieve with legitimate means Since their rights were denied, they obtained them through illicit means.
It is despicable to blame the comparatively weaker members of society for deep-seated and long-standing societal conflicts. It is too simplistic, and often simply wrong. And thus, Merz's passage about the "cityscape" is also despicable at this point, in that it conceals the true source of the problem: the decades-long pursuit of misguided neoliberal policies far beyond their very limited scope. Where consumption becomes a virtue, but goods are finite, the "ever more" leads to an imbalance that disadvantages the broad middle class. To then instigate petty wars and trench warfare within this broad mass to secure one's own hold on power is downright perverse.
Friedrich Merz is attempting precisely this: he distorts the facts, appeals to primal human fears by conjuring up a devilish image, while simultaneously working to exacerbate the problem in the long term through special funds and social cuts. Thus, future pensions will become a gamble in the birth lottery and on the stock market. According to the prognosis, one will no longer be able to rely on one's fellow citizens or on the community as a whole.
As long as politicians profit from inflating crises in social cohesion and, if necessary, exacerbating them, thereby driving us apart, isolating us, and dismantling the foundations of a good society--be it through blame, promoting injustice, or shifting responsibility for their own mistakes onto the shrinking middle class--these problems will only persist. exacerbate the situation, making the cityscape even harsher and more unpleasant. And this isn't due to the people who pass through the city, but rather to the scars left by misguided, self-indulgent policies.
November 4, 2025
*Bent-Erik Scholz works as a freelancer for RBB
HIER GEHTS ZUM NEUEN BUCH
What's being kept quiet is that the housing shortage didn't begin in 2015. It's the result of a trend in which too few new apartments have been built in Germany for several years. In 2024, the goal of building 400,000 new apartments was missed by almost half. Due to artificial scarcity, rents have been skyrocketing for years, particularly in major German cities. Something as fundamental as a roof over one's head is becoming increasingly unaffordable, partly because housing companies like Vonovia and LEG, driven by private interests, are pushing up prices and trying to force existing tenants out of old contracts in order to offer new ones at higher prices per square meter.
Homelessness is also rising steadily. This is not only due to the housing shortage, but also to a radical shift in consumer behavior. The retail sector is quietly and steadily dying out. The general shift to e-commerce and online shopping has forced many traditional companies to downsize, if not into bankruptcy, jeopardizing careers and often eliminating good jobs with fair wages. Large corporations like Amazon and Lieferando profit from this, as do chains and franchises that use their growing market dominance to engage in wage dumping just enough to be legally permitted. These companies, which often operate internationally, pay their taxes in other European countries. It is estimated that this results in billions of euros in lost revenue for the treasury each year. This is offset by the working population, who rightly complain about high tax rates and what they perceive as wasteful spending. There is no will to rectify this situation, because keeping these large corporations in the country at all costs is considered more important than the well-being of the majority of the population. It's a form of hidden oligarchy.
The result: inequality is increasing, and purchasing power is shifting. Fewer and fewer people can afford more and more; 10% of Germans own roughly 60-67% of the total net wealth in Germany. At the same time, 15.5% of Germans were at risk of poverty last year, and this figure has been rising in recent years. Cracks are running through German cities. Wealth and poverty exist side by side, yet the canyons between them are growing ever deeper. For decades, homeless people, beggars, and drug addicts have been a common sight not far from the luxury shops on Berlin's Kurfürstendamm; these worlds coexist, yet remain irreconcilable.
After all, why deny it when isolation is made so palatable in every aspect of our lives? Order terminals spare us the embarrassment of speaking to a waiter in a restaurant, online shopping saves us from going out, browsing, and trying things on--and what about the parks? Better to avoid them too, as they are considered dangerous. If anything, it's better to go to a concert for seventy euros among fellow citizens of similar purchasing power, who pose less of a risk than any of the antisocial elements on the street. We isolate the poor and foreigners in their respective ghettos, the rich voluntarily isolate themselves out of distrust of the world, and we always remain at a distance from one another. Even the office, perhaps the most casual and typical meeting place for the average German, is dying out in the age of home office and remote working.
As a result, the cityscape is taking shape as follows: empty streets in industrial parks, a concentration of wealth in a few parts of the city, and a cluster of poverty whose visibility is half-heartedly or coldly addressed through architecture that is hostile to the homeless, but for which no solutions are formulated. Due to overconsumption and the general availability of everything, we are also observing increasing littering. Trash cans overflowing with pizza boxes, plastic packaging, and paper cups, and emaciated people sifting through them for returnable bottles and cans, hoping to find something to use at the supermarket.To be able to buy some rolls for dinner at the market.
According to Friedrich Merz's definition, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this cityscape; it only becomes problematic for him when more and more non-Germans are seen in it. This is not only cynical, but it is also loaded with misanthropic suggestions through dubious, populist insinuations ("Just ask your daughters"), in order to bastardize the very noble impulse to protect women from external attacks by invoking an ethnic hierarchy. And all this for flimsy reasons, because the crime rate in Germany is stagnating despite increasing immigration. While the number of sexual offenses has been significantly higher since the 2016/17 criminal law reform, due to the broadening of the definition and the inclusion of more offenses, it has nevertheless remained constant, even trending downwards.
But let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that the number of crimes had actually exploded due to migration. Then we would have to ask ourselves why crime occurs. It's not enough to simply look at the passports of perpetrators; after all, many who immediately ask about the perpetrator's origin when hearing reports of violent crimes would... It's worth objecting when a possible pattern is suggested based on the fact that sexual offenses are primarily committed by men. Not all men, but potentially all migrants? There must be something else at play.
The main factors contributing to crime have always been economic pressure, exclusion, and frustration with one's own (potentially precarious) living conditions--in short, poverty and isolation, for example, in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Those who are ghettoized and grow up in an environment of violence and drug-related crime are shaped by this. Someone born into a prosperous family is unlikely to steal cigarettes from Aldi. Someone fleeing a war and arriving in a country that, while offering relatively good survival, also constantly reminds them that they don't really belong and are initially viewed with suspicion--will likely find it difficult to feel like part of this society. Furthermore, migrants have often been, and continue to be, limited in their opportunities to gain a foothold in Germany and achieve upward mobility. What they can achieve with legitimate means Since their rights were denied, they obtained them through illicit means.
It is despicable to blame the comparatively weaker members of society for deep-seated and long-standing societal conflicts. It is too simplistic, and often simply wrong. And thus, Merz's passage about the "cityscape" is also despicable at this point, in that it conceals the true source of the problem: the decades-long pursuit of misguided neoliberal policies far beyond their very limited scope. Where consumption becomes a virtue, but goods are finite, the "ever more" leads to an imbalance that disadvantages the broad middle class. To then instigate petty wars and trench warfare within this broad mass to secure one's own hold on power is downright perverse.
Friedrich Merz is attempting precisely this: he distorts the facts, appeals to primal human fears by conjuring up a devilish image, while simultaneously working to exacerbate the problem in the long term through special funds and social cuts. Thus, future pensions will become a gamble in the birth lottery and on the stock market. According to the prognosis, one will no longer be able to rely on one's fellow citizens or on the community as a whole.
As long as politicians profit from inflating crises in social cohesion and, if necessary, exacerbating them, thereby driving us apart, isolating us, and dismantling the foundations of a good society--be it through blame, promoting injustice, or shifting responsibility for their own mistakes onto the shrinking middle class--these problems will only persist. exacerbate the situation, making the cityscape even harsher and more unpleasant. And this isn't due to the people who pass through the city, but rather to the scars left by misguided, self-indulgent policies.
November 4, 2025
*Bent-Erik Scholz works as a freelancer for RBB
HIER GEHTS ZUM NEUEN BUCH
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