Signa pretends to connect to the history of the location by restoring the building’s facade to how it looked in 1929. However, images of supposed lost “greatness” do not make today’s city better. To the contrary, this reconstruction is an expression of the contemporary societal shift to the right.
- The past is trivialized – it was not “golden”. Poverty and housing shortage, fascist infiltration and violence – these were the twenties, too
- The post-war period becomes invisible – the current building, a construction symbolic for post-war modernity and therefore an affirmation against the architectural pomposity and demonstration of power that coined the colonial and Nazi period, is supposed to be demolis
- The history of migration is neglected – the diversity of Berlin is not represented in the building drafts – we are not welcome
Today, we need to resist poverty, housing shortages, right-wing terror and Nazis on the rise. This includes: preventing René Benko from constructing a building in our neighborhood that brutally symbolizes power. He is the head of Signa and since the Ibiza-Video allegedly known to be a major donor to Austria’s extreme right-wing party FPÖ.
We will not be deceived by the usual tokenistic participation procedures and compromises. We resist against all construction projects by Signa in Berlin.