Resistance at the FU: Container Village instead of a university building?

Resistance at the FU: Container Village instead of a university building?

The property on Thielallee 63 in Berlin-Dahlem, which is currently being used as a parking lot, is to be converted into a container village for 260 refugees in the near future. However, these plans encounter resistance, especially at the Free University (FU) Berlin, which wants to build a building for teaching and research on the site.

The President of the FU, Günter Ziegler, criticizes that the university management was not included in the Senate plans and only found out about it from the media. The university had already signaled its willingness to support refugees in the past, but emphasizes that the current property is needed for its own construction projects and that other areas such as vacant buildings of the Federal Agency for Real Estate tasks could be used nearby.

The Senate decided to build 16 other container villages at the end of March because the need for accommodation for refugees in Berlin is still high. The distribution of the locations shows a strong concentration in the city's eastern districts, which leads to inequality in accommodation. In addition to the container villages, another project in Steglitz-Zehlendorf is planned on the FU site, which leads to criticism and ridicule on the net, in particular about the supposed discrepancy between the cosmopolitan image of the university and the resistance to refugee accommodation.