[spectre] Winter is Here. All About Andre (Holm)

[Diana McCarty]

Hi! For those of you here in Berlin, or on their way for Transmediale,
the CTM Festival and/or the Berlinale, a little bit of context on
local struggles!.
Ironically - in this case - you might remember his name from earlier
festivals and news from Berlin when he was wrongly jailed and accused
of being a terrorist and under surveillance by the German Secret
Service. This earlier case also received international attention:
then, his crime was writing about gentrification and using words like
post-structural marxism.... And so it goes.

All about Andrej – A few words for the english speaking audience // #holmbleibt

http://wirbleibenalle.org/?p=3414

Posted on 22. Januar 2017

On December 13th, 2016, Andrej Holm was appointed State Secretary of
Housing in Berlin by Senator for Urban Development und Housing, Katrin
Lompscher (Die Linke). Within a month he was forced to resign due to a
highly politicized smear campaign. The smear campaign also resulted in
Andrej’s dismissal from his position at Humboldt University. Andrej
Holm is a well-known critical scholar and activist, especially
concerning housing issues and his appointment appeared as a way for
Die Linke to demonstrate that they are serious about a genuine social
orientation of the city’s housing policy.

This chronicle of events, background information and appeal for
support is aimed at the international community.

Since late December, Berlin’s urban social movements have engaged in
defending Andrej Holm, an activist and critical scholar, appointed as
State Secretary of Housing of the Berlin Senate for Urban Development
und Housing in December, and subsequently forced to resign in
mid-January, 2017.

In September 2016, the Berliner electorate voted in a new government
for the city and the Federal State of Berlin. In early December, the
SPD (Social Democratic Party), the Green Party, and Die Linke (the
Left Party) formed a government coalition. The new red-red-green
coalition marked a considerable change from the previous legislature
led by the conservative CDU and the social-democrat SPD and raised
hopes for a more progressive and socially oriented city politics. In
the subsequent days, the new government started assembling its new
personnel, starting with the Senators (who are the equivalent of
ministers) and State Secretaries (who hold a crucial position within
the Berlin city government.

Although it was evident from the start that a move as radical as
Andrej Holm’s appointment would be met with at least some resistance
by the city’s political class, no one could have expected what was
about to follow. After only a couple of days, members of the CDU and
the SPD, as well as parts of the media, started an aggressive
smear-campaign against Andrej. In this context, the main argument
against Andrej’s appointment was his five months as a trainee and
prospective officer of the Ministry of State Security of the German
Democratic Republic (popularly known as the „Stasi“). This was over 25
years ago – from September 1989 until January 1990, when he was 19
years of age.

A perpetually escalating political conflict and media hyperbole marked
the following month over the holidays. On the one hand, the
smear-campaign reached unprecedented levels: details of Andrej´s
personal biography were twisted and sensationalized as coverage
concentrated on Andrej’s past and character rather than what his
appointment might mean for the housing situation in Berlin. Lies and
half-truths quickly spread as news outlets started quoting each other,
rather than using primary documents and statements as their main
source. The focus was never on what Andrej Holm could achieve for
local residents as Berlin’s State Secretary of Housing, rather it
sensationalized the actions of a teenager who had just begun his
training at the Stasi. From the beginning, critics had designs on
Andrej’s dismissal.

On the other hand, solidarity with Andrej has grown stronger and ever
more visible. A group of urban movements active around housing issues
has within a few weeks gathered more than 16,000 signatures in a
petition demanding the Senate keep Andrej in the government. Moreover,
although newspapers mostly promoted views critical of Andrej, public
opinion, polls published in the online editions of those same papers
demonstrated significant support for Andrej’s appointment as Secretary
of Housing, with even East German opposition and former victims of the
Stasi coming forward to declare their support.

The Stasi issue is, of course, a very delicate one in German
collective memory and the country’s coming to terms with its division
during the Cold War. Without doubt, the Stasi has come to stand for
the criminal character and brutality of the East German regime. Die
Linke, who are legally the direct successors of the SED (the German
Socialist Unity Party, the governing party of East Germany), play a
critical role in this story, as the party is called upon to
demonstrate that it has convincingly broken with its authoritarian
past while, at the same time, maintaining socialist ideals.

The campaign against Andrej took a dramatic turn when it emerged that
Andrej had (allegedly) mischaracterized his brief involvement with the
Stasi in a 2005 questionnaire filled out in order to accept an
academic position at Humboldt University. Public institutions in
Germany require employees to state their (non-) involvement with the
Stasi through the use of such questionnaires when applying for mid- to
high-ranking positions. When Andrej accepted his job at the
University, he stated in the questionnaire he had begun his military
service with a particular Stasi regiment.

However, based on files obtained from the Stasi Archives and published
(practically on the day of his appointment) by Berlin’s tabloid the
BZ, the press argued Andrej Holm’s statement was formally false. The
documents showed that Andrej was classified as a „trainee officer“,
i.e. that he was not merely a trainee, but one already intending to
become an officer. This point was avidly echoed by several
politicians. Having completed only five months of service as a trainee
in various low-level positions, however, his training ended with
dismissal when the revolution in the GDR led to the dissolution of the
Stasi.

>From the moment the issue of the questionnaire became public, the
entire campaign honed in on Andrej´s allegedly deliberate lie to
Humboldt University. His detractors maintained that Andrej “deserved”
to be dismissed from his political appointment as Secretary of
Housing, as well as from his academic researcher position at Humboldt
University. At the same time, Die Linke reacted to the growing
political pressure by binding its decision on Andrej’s future as State
Secretary of Housing to the juridical evaluation of his questionnaire
answers, which the University was about to undertake.

Shortly after this, Andrej participated in a public discussion hosted
by an institution connected to the former GDR opposition in which he
discussed his past involvement with the Stasi and demonstrated
complete readiness to take responsibility for his past and to discuss
the complex issue of his involvement with the Stasi and how he had
dealt with it. He did this in a context in which he could expect
intense, and to some degree, justified, questioning from those who had
suffered under the Stasi. Andrej’s willingness to account for his past
in such a way is indicative of how he has dealt with his past since
the early 90s. Instead of hiding within the echo-chambers of Stasi or
GDR apologists (which exist in both former East and West German
political circles), he has joined political groups with a background
in the GDR opposition, and made his past entirely transparent. In
2007, he disclosed his Stasi-involvement in a national newspaper
without any pressure to do so.

Four weeks after the escalating campaign had closed in on this
subject, the new mayor, Michael Müller (SPD), hastily made a U-turn on
the agreed procedure for Andrej’s evaluation and, on Saturday January
14th, formally requested that Senator Lompscher dismiss Andrej. He
argued that Andrej´s polarizing role was damaging to the city.

On Monday, January 16th, Andrej issued a statement announcing his
resignation from the position as State Secretary of Housing. He argued
that he did not want his pending case to give the mayor an opportunity
to end the red-red-green coalition. In his words, the alternatives to
such coalitions would be much more detrimental to the lives of
Berliners than his dismissal. His retreat means a huge political
defeat for Berlin’s social movements and all residents who want a
progressive and social housing policy – as demonstrated in the recent
election. It is a well-known fact that since the onset of the global
financial crisis, the city´s real estate market has attracted an
enormous amount of investment from German and international capital.
As a direct consequence, rental prices have risen significantly,
evictions have become a daily reality, and many people with low to
middle-incomes find it increasingly difficult to find affordable
housing. In this situation, the need for reform is abundantly clear
and Berlin’s social movements have fought for such measures for years.
Against this backdrop, Andrej’s dismissal has led to as much
frustration and skepticism about the chances for genuine reforms being
implemented by the current government, as his appointment a few weeks
ago raised the hopes for such measures.

While it is still too early to gauge the political consequences of
Andrej’s resignation entirely, the reactions by the social movements
have been immediate and forceful. At the same time, Andrej´s stepping
down reduced the political relevance of Humboldt University’s decision
regarding the questionnaire which was due two days after Andrej’s
forced resignation. During those two days, more than 250 University
students demonstrated their strong support by publishing and signing
an open letter to the University’s Presidenent and which asked for
Andrej to be allowed to continue working at Humboldt University. Some
weeks before, 300 scholars from Berlin and greater Germany had already
signed a public letter of support. International academics have also
shown solidarity by voicing their support in the form of an open
letter.

The President of Humboldt University, Prof. Sabine Kunst, nevertheless
decided against Andrej. On the 18th of January, at a public press
conference and during a meeting at the Institute for Social Sciences,
Kunst explained the reasons behind her decision. While she praised
Andrej´s work as a researcher and teacher, she declared that the
University could no longer place confidence in him, because of the –
in her view – wrongly marked box in the 2005 questionnaire. Labour law
professionals interviewed by the media have emphasized that a
dismissal based on this argumentation, even if it were found that
Andrej had, indeed, been wrong in filling out the questionnaire as he
did, would not necessarily be legally valid and that one could
challenge a dismissal based on this argument in court.

Social movements, critical researchers, and students have since united
in a strong show of solidarity. Since the night of January 18th, the
Institute for Social Science has been occupied by student protesters.
The students are demanding that Andrej be reinstated in order for
there to be more critical perspectives in teaching and research at the
University. Student representatives have also remarked on the
political nature of his dismissal. They feel that the university has
bowed to political pressure from the conservative parties, parts of
the media, and real estate lobbies. With this dismissal, they argue,
Sabine Kunst has ousted one of the last remaining critical voices from
Humboldt University, and one of the most engaged public sociologists
to have taken academic knowledge out of the proverbial ivory tower.
The decision means that the social movements in Berlin and elsewhere
could lose one of their most brilliant producers of critical knowledge
on housing issues, as well as on urban struggles for equality and
justice.

In light of what has been described above and despite this frustrating
turn of events, we, as individuals and representatives from various
Berlin tenant initiatives nevertheless believe that further actions
can be effective. We believe that a great wave of critical voices in
favor and support of Andrej and what he stands for – the fight against
gentrification and for the right to the city – could help Andrej
continue his work and further the interests of city residents. With
this in mind, we ask for your solidarity and that you voice your
support for Andrej.

Winter is here.

By individuals and representatives from various Berlin tenant initiatives