1996 BERLIN

 In 199-0, the Berlin Wall was torn down. The West population filled the vacuum with a speed and thoroughness that smacked of conquest. Westerners took over the top posts in East Berlins hospitals and universities, imposed western taxes and laws and introduced western textbooks in schools. Low rent neighborhoods were gentryfied, forcing tenants to move out. Streets and squares, socialist statues were topppled or renamed. Eastern border guard monuments who had been killed by the West were removed, while their opposite numbers remain.  The West was determined to erase all traces of the Easterners if it could, and deny their very existence. The East had a vision of a more just society, of solidarity, trustworthiness, loyalty and friendship. These ideals are absent today. The aim then was to excel in your community, your school, your group, not purely for individual achievement. Today you must be the first, the greatest with the best job and the best bitches or no one will look at you. A year later, the Soviet Union officially collapsed.The Squatters' Council is formed, and represents more than 120 squatted buildings. The East German police avoid areas dominated by anarchists and autonomists, squatters are negotiating with the East Berlin officials to get contracts for their buildings, the sun is shining a lot, some Nazis make a few problems now and then, and fascists even squat their own building in the Weitlingstrasse. Germany becomes a reunited 'Vaterland' once again. Control over the police forces is handed over to West Berlin. The first riot police attacks by West Berlin cops in East Berlin take place. Police evict 3 squats in the Pfarrstrasse and the Cotheniusstrasse. Following protest actions in the Friedrichshain neighborhood, water cannons begin to spray 12 squatted houses in the Mainzerstrasse. A riot starts and last into the night, forcing the police to retreat. More than 4,000 riot police and special commandos from all over Germany brutally evict the barricaded Mainzerstrasse. The Greens protest the evictions by leaving their coalition government with the social democratic SPD party. The city is then governed by a coalition of the SPD and the right-wing CDU.  There are more evictions: Kadinerstrasse and Lubbenerstrasse in West Berlin.

1996    GERMANY. The former 'Bundeswehr' general Jorg Schonbohm becomes Berlin's Interior Minister and declares that all squats will be evicted. The Palisadenstrasse 49 is evicted. The Kleine Hamburger Strasse 5 is evicted. The front house at Rigaer Strasse 80 is evicted, as is the Alt Stralau, which had been squatted in early 199-5. A punk squat in the Kreutziger Strasse and the Samariterstrasse 31 are evicted. Riot police attack a party in the Kreutziger Strasse because there was "too much noise" - at 9 p.m. Eviction of the wagon places on the East-Side-Gallery and the rear house at Kreutziger Strasse 11. The last squat in West Berlin is evicted: Marchstrasse/Einsteinufer. The Linienstrasse 158/159 is evicted. Several squats are evicted: the front of Kinzigstrasse 9, Kreutziger Strasse 21, and parts of the Kreutziger Strasse 11, 12, and 13. A new squat in the Pfarrstrasse is immediately evicted. Squatters are fed up. A trolley car in Friedrichshain goes up in flames, as does a business belonging to the owner of the evicted Palisadenstrasse 49. All is quiet for half a year....