Crisis talk at Lanz
How Zossen’s mayor combats youth violence
By Marko Schlichting
May 22, 2024, 4:03 a.m
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Since the assassination attempt on the Saxon SPD top candidate Matthias Ecke, the topic of violence has been on everyone’s lips. A mayor of Brandenburg also has to struggle with this. In the ZDF talk show Markus Lanz she reports about her problems – and their solutions.
Zossen is a small town in eastern Germany. It is located just under an hour’s drive from Berlin, in Brandenburg. A new state parliament will be elected there in September. Zossen is governed by an FDP mayor. Her name is Wiebke Sahin-Schwarzweller. And it has the problems that almost every local mayor has: tight coffers, a growing proportion of refugees, dissatisfied citizens. She knows violence. And she has a recipe for it that partially works in Zossen, she told the ZDF talk show “Markus Lanz” that evening.
It happened a few weeks ago: A woman in Dresden was threatened by a group of violent adults when she was sticking up election posters for the Green Party. She is attacked and told to “fuck off.” “This is AfD territory,” can be heard clearly. The video can be seen on the Internet. Lanz shows it on his show. “In 2019, my election campaign went something like this,” says Sahin-Schwarzweller. “The images we are seeing now are frightening, and of course they are also a threat to democracy.” But a lot has changed in Zossen now, she explains.
22,000 residents live in the city. There is an initial reception center for refugees there. It holds 1,500 people and is currently occupied by almost 1,100 refugees. “The fact is that these people also use our infrastructure, but we are also very helpful,” says Sahin-Schwarzweller. The mayor says that citizens need to be informed about the situation of refugees. But Zossen has a big problem: “We are at the edge of our capacity.”
The history of the misery
The previous government in the city is partly to blame for this. An alliance called “Plan B” ruled there for sixteen years. “The consequences of this are very complex, and our city has not recovered from it to this day. We have to make it clear to the citizens that democracy can improve living conditions in the communities.”
Plan B was an alliance of right-wing citizens and parties, explains Sahin-Schwarzweller. The AfD is not one of them. But that too has now “arrived well” in Zossen. During his time in government, the citizens’ alliance set the trade tax rate at 200 percent. That is very low. Sahin-Schwarzweller: “We then spent one euro and nine cents for every euro we earned.” So it’s a losing proposition for the city. However, many companies settled in Zossen – although often only on paper. The city in Brandenburg was a tax haven for companies.
Almost broke
The ARD program Panorama found out in 2021 that around 2,000 companies allegedly had their headquarters in Zossen at that time. The responsible landlord claimed to have housed around 200 companies in a two-story apartment building on a remote village street near Zossen alone. Zossen became a mecca for shell companies. And this is completely legal: the municipalities can determine the trade tax rate relatively freely.
The companies themselves rejoiced: they only paid seven percent trade tax until 2021, half as much as in nearby Berlin. In the meantime, the city council in Zossen has increased the trade tax rate. But: “We ended up in budget security,” says Sahin-Schwarzweller. That means the city is basically bankrupt. The reputation of the “shell company oasis” has recovered a little; the tax investigation is investigating which companies actually have employees in Zossen and which do not. At the same time, the city must reimburse other communities for money that they lost due to the policies of the previous government.
Violence against local politicians
She herself has been spared violence in recent years, says Sahin-Schwarzweller. Nevertheless, she knows the problem: at the end of 2021, unknown people sealed the chimney of a member of the city council, there were constant arguments in the meeting, so that hardly a meeting could now take place without employees of the public order office. The police also had to move in to remove people from the meeting.
Something had to be done. Sahin-Schwarzweller set up public consultation hours for dissatisfied people. They are well attended. Many citizens just come to vent their frustration, says the mayor. Violence among young people is a particular problem. But here too, Sahin-Schwarzweller has concepts that seem to work. “I believe that it is important that young people are picked up at an early stage. I am of the opinion that they should also be given some responsibility, for example in a youth parliament, so that they can exercise their own creativity.”
The result is noticeable
In addition, young people need to be given meaningful employment in order to prepare them for society and the challenges of today. To achieve this, more social workers are needed, especially in socially disadvantaged areas, in schools and youth centers. “We are currently working on a new project in Zossen where we are building a multi-generational center where the children will have a youth center,” says Sahin-Schwarzweller. The results are noticeable: “We don’t have as much child and youth violence because we are doing more prevention.”
The local politician knows that her city still needs to do more in terms of youth work. But a start would be made if violent young people understood that society is there for them. After all, today’s young people are tomorrow’s adults.