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Interview with Knut Hildebrandt
Editor of Scheinschlag magazine

Levente Polyák
Berlin, November 2006

- What were the reasons of founding the Scheinschlag magazine?

- The first issue came out in November 1990. It was founded by Willy, and at that time he was living in a squatted house. He came from West Berlin to the east, with all the other Western squatters, they found empty spaces here, and his idea was to cover all the events in the East, the changes in the Eastern districts, with another view. Not the view of Die Zeit or Springer, but that of the people who lived here and who were affected by these changes. He went around, tried to find shop owners, looking for advertisements that would pay the magazine, talked to officials just to get people paid. He was working on that for at least two years.

- How was the relationship between East-Berliners and West-Berliners when the Wall came down? When did those Western youth oame to the Eastern districts?

- For me it was not a problem, West-Berliners or East-Berliners. The question was rather what kind of people came over. A lot of interesting people came over, the people who during the first days squatted houses were from the West. Here nobody knew what it meant to squat a house. People in the East squatted flats, invisibly. We needed a flat, went to the houses, and there were many flats left abandoned, we just opened the door and moved in. People who came from the West, had different ideas of what it meant living in a community. Living together in a house, moving together. So when the Wall came down, they just came here and built up their projects. It was very interesting. It was the good part. But there were also people coming here to buy houses, just to make profit. It was the bad part about that period. So it all depended on the people.

- How did Willy found people to contribute to Scheinschlag?

- In the first two-three years, most of the people working for the magazine were paid by the job centers. If you worked for a non-profit organisation, you got a salary at that time. 1991-92 often people were paid by the job center.

- Were there some examples, similar magazines before the eyes of the founders?

- At that time, in 1990 and 1991 there were many new independent small newspapers founded, mostly by squatters. I knew some, in Prenzlauerberg, in Friedrichshain, but those did not survive. Only Scheinschlag survived. The others were not as professional as Scheinschlag. It's a real magazine, there were times, when we printed about 30.000 copies. Now it's about 15-20.000 copies.

- When was the peak of the publication?

- In the beginning and mid-nineties. Then a lot of people were effected immediately by the changes. When they started to refurbish the area, the new house owners just wanted to get the old tenants out, to send them away, refurbish the house and to rent them to more prosperous people. Most of the people living here didn't have much money, most of them didn't have a job anymore. And when this started, all the movements started as well. The "WBA", "Wir bleiben Alle" or "We're all staying here" was the movement of people living here, who didn't want to leave just for financial reasons, because they couldn't pay the rent anymore. And there were a lot of connections between the movement and the paper, the Scheinschlag. These were the heydays. It was the voice of the movement.

- You have political issues and you have also critics of film and art, affairs which are related to Berlin in a way. I think that this focus on Berlin is quite exciting. How did all this complexity come together? How did this structure appear?

- We started as a political magazine. Part of the politics happening here was off-culture. There are many links between off-culture and off-political movement. We as editors of the newspaper are part of both. We are connected to the political movement and to the off-culture, too. This is one reason why both areas are covered in the newspaper. Another reason you find in the people's interest. We are interested in both: many of us work for other media as well on these issues... we are very political people.

- Is there an organisation behind Scheinschlag?

- There is an association behind, which was founded just for the reason to bring funding possibilities, it does not have any other goals.

- Are you still involved in the movement? I think the political problems of the city are different now than earlier.

- I think the changes are finished now, here in Prenzlauerberg. There are no big changes anymore here, no big fights. It's more established, especially the Kollwitzplatz area is totally established, it's a very up market area now.

- What are the big issues now?

- There are big issues, of course, like the "Harz Vier" one year ago. They totally changed the system how unemployed people got money, reorganised the job center, and many many people were protesting against it. It was a big issue in Scheinschlag as well, we covered it. But we couldn't achieve anything, even all the social movement behind it couldn't change the politics. And not only Scheinschlag covered it, all the big newspapers were dealing with this question.

- What about urban development?

- What's still a big issue and what we still cover is the scandal about the Berlin Bank. When Potsdamer Platz and all the central Berlin area was developed, this bank was guaranteeing a certain minimum outcome. But the development was not as successful as planned, and big losses were made and Berlin had to pay. The city has to pay for it. This was a big issue and we covered it week by week. We just can cover it and hope that the people living in Berlin will change politics by voting for more clever politicians.

- How do you see Berlin now?

- For me it's still exciting. A lot of interesting thing is happening still, but it's much more static than it was some years ago. The most exciting times for me were the first 5-6 years after the Wall came down. Every corner there were squatted houses, illegal clubs and pubs...all these things don't happen anymore. We are still staying with Scheinschlag in a former squatted house on Ackerstrasse. We have serious fights with the owner who wants to refurbish the space and sell it. All the alternative culture has to go, because there is no space anymore, and no money. Not here, more in some other districts, many people migrate to other parts like Wedding or even Lichtenberg.

- Did the transformations of the city effect the way Scheinschlag's functioning changed?

- We have to change. We have changed a lot over the years. Changes mostly occured when new people come or when old people go. With their views, their ideas. And there are changed that just happen. Sometimes changes have to be made, sometimes for financial reasons.

- What were the major changes?

- We shifted from urban development to more political, more social issues. Because in the beginning the main social issues were related to urban development. People felt changes in the housing and living conditions. Now questions of how can people make their living are more important. And I think that the changes that will come next is that we will shift our focus more to other districts. We're still very much based in the central districts like Mitte, Prenzlauerberg, Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg, but other parts will be more significant soon. We have to follow the events that are happening there. In the central districts everything is very established...it doesn't mean that they're boring, but...no new things are happening. People who want new things, they move further out as they can't afford to be here. The temporary use of shops, for instance, doesn't happen in Mitte anymore, it happens in Neukölln.

- Are there many other NGOs involved in city issues? Is there a strong public discourse about the city?

- There is a public discourse but it shifted to other districts of the city. It's the reason why Scheinschlag shifted its focus to other districts as well: nowadays we cover events in Wedding, district of former West-Berlin, Neukölln as well, in the south. there are a lot of social tensions between the German and the ethnic population. This is a new question, here it has never been an issue, as immigrants didn't move here. Lot of people, people with weak financial resources, or students for example, moved to those former Western districts, for financial reasons, many of my colleagues moved to Neukölln for instance where rents are lower, there are cheap lofts. So many politically thinking people live there, lot of off-culture is happening there.

- It is connected to how your network is moving.

- Yes, definitely. We always have people in the areas that we are covering. In the first years mostly Mitte, Prenzlauerberg, Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg as well, were covered, but now we are going further out in the city. It would be interesting to make a map of the network of Scheinschlag spreading out in the city.

- How can the newspaper keep its financial independence?

- It's very difficoult. We can't live out of the newspaper. Most people working for the magazine do it without any payment. We are producing another paper, financed by the local government, covering refurbishment of some parts. It contains public information. And it is definitely not as political as the rest of the paper. The local government pays for it, and the money is enough to produce the Scheinschlag as well. We are covering Mitte and Moabit at the moment. This is a construction that works, but it won't work anymore. In Berlin there are certain areas where there is a lot of refurbishment needed, these are established as "Sanierungsgebiete". In these areas the government has to inform the people about what is going on. They often publish in newspapers. We are one of them. It may continue for another 2-3 years. The next big change may be in the newspaper that we'll have to look for a new financial support. It may result in our shifting focus as well.