Berlin's Hot Housing Market

In Berlin, private equity and Europe’s wealthy displace artists

The artists helped make their neighborhood a hub for tourism, and it’s gotten much trendierPhotograph by Gordon Welters/The New York Times/Redux

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By Dalia Fahmy

September 13, 2012 at 7:47 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

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This article is part of the September 17, 2012 issue of businessweek.

Berlin's Hot Housing Market — Protests helped Berlin’s squatting artists’ collective repel 20 years of eviction attemptsPhotograph by Sean Gallup/Getty Images

On a crisp September morning outside the graffiti-covered former Berlin department store known as Tacheles, Martin Reiter watched his fellow squatters haul their art away. Artists colonized the store shortly after the Berlin Wall fell, and though they had fended off more than a dozen eviction attempts, the 40 current occupants finally lost their studios. The real estate had become too valuable. “There is no point in fighting this any longer,” says Reiter, 50, who once made motorized sculptures from stolen construction equipment. As bailiffs supervised the eviction, Reiter excoriated the private consortium of banks with claims on the property. “These zombies don’t care whether people are evicted or not,” he says. “To them, all that matters is the profit.”