Notes

[1] The Rote Flora is Hamburg’s main squatted social center and autonomous space. It is located in the Schanzen district of Hamburg, at 71 Schulterblatt St. The “Culture House” next door is four stories tall.

[2] The two largest newspapers in Hamburg, liberal and conservative, respectively, and the latter owned by Springer, the major German media baron. Later in the article the former is referred to ironically as the Mopo.

[3] A commercial project for the development of the plaza — or piazza — just next to Schulterblatt street.

[4] Hamburg’s urban development bureau, like HUD in the US.

[5] An institution for junkies to shoot up in a safe environment.

[6] An abandoned water tower in a park that was converted into a 4 star hotel.

[7] Asta is the official student union.

[8] A student-oriented movie theater.

[9] Two alternative Hamburg magazines.

[10] The Schlachthof was an abandoned slaughterhouse that was transformed into a community center but eventually came to offer little more than yuppy bars, galleries, a pricey concert hall, and offices.

[11] I’ve translated “Ökonomosierung” as “neoliberalization.” Sadly, in English “economizing” means to make more efficient, and “privatization” is too limited and technical a term. “Neoliberalization” suggests the necessary broadness and capitalist agency, but the reader should not get the sense that the writer is speaking within a newer antiglobalization framework so much as an older and deeper anticapitalist critique.

[12] In tandem with the rest of the European Union, German universities have recently been overhauled, away from earlier forms that encouraged free study and towards a new model similar to that of the US, in which students are produced to meet economic needs and moved quickly from scholarship to employment.

[13] A sort of economic expo, located in any major city, where new products are showcased.

[14] An out of the way street which at the time was in a run down area.

[15] The Reeperbahn, one of Hamburg’s red light districts and a major tourist destination, is now under complete video surveillance.

[16] The Multipleks is a squatted free-space/autonomous zone in Leiden that has existed since September 2004, and hosts internet cafés, info-evenings, eetcafes (roughly, food-cafés), squatting network meetings, cinema evenings, etc.

[17] The Minister of Housing, Spatial Planning, and Environment, in the cabinet of the second conservative coalition government under Jan Peter Balkenende.

[18] Literally “housing-need,” the word here refers less to a specific crisis and more generally to the compulsion under capitalism to acquire housing as a commodity and not a right, whereby people can need a house but not have one despite the availability of houses.

[19] A bakfiets is a quintessentially Dutch cross between a bicycle and a wheelbarrow, very useful for transporting heavy things around a city if you don’t have a car.

[20] The Capital Group was a high profile group of people arrested in Den Haag, the Dutch capital. Theo van Gogh was a progressive filmmaker who made a film perceived to be critical or insulting towards Islam.

[21] The Christian Democrats and the Liberals, major political parties on the right and center, respectively, that make up the ruling coaltion.