British fans are furious that the European Championship venue Gelsenkirchen is an “absolute shithole”. FOCUS online visited the Ruhr area city, which is fighting against poverty, unemployment and the negative consequences of immigration, some time ago. Little has changed. Here is the report.
It’s looking gloomy again over the Ruhr area. Everything is grey. Sleet is falling on Gelsenkirchen. People are walking through the mud with umbrellas open. If you stand for too long, you’ll feel the damp cold creeping up your legs.
The low is deepest around the main train station.
By the afternoon, a man who has been knocked down by alcohol is crawling on all fours through the waiting room. A homeless man is sleeping in front of the lockers. Someone throws a coin into a cup that a beggar is holding in front of her body with clammy fingers.
All just excerpts, all snapshots, of course. But anyone who comes to Gelsenkirchen these days doesn’t have to look for poverty. You’ll find it on almost every corner. Inevitably.
The former coal stronghold, whose hard-working workers kept the economic engine of the Federal Republic running for a long time, is considered the “poorest city in Germany”. In a 2018 study that assessed the quality of life in all 401 cities and districts, Gelsenkirchen came in last place.
If the same study were to be carried out again today, the results would hardly be any better.
Fans of the Gelsenkirchen-based football club Schalke 04 know all too well what it’s like to be at the bottom of the table. But the traditional club, which experienced glorious times and still bears the exclusive title of “Champion of Hearts”, can work its way back up from the basement within a few weeks.
Gelsenkirchen can’t do that. It will take years to get back on its feet. Realistically, decades.
The bitter conclusion of many surveys and studies: In probably no other place are the consequences of a total economic upheaval as painfully felt as in Gelsenkirchen – despite all the efforts of those responsible to stop the decline of their city.
Gelsenkirchen has to spend more than 600 million euros a year on transfer payments. That is almost half of the total money available to the city in its budget. The largest items include classic social transfers:
The figures show how heavy the burdens of the past are weighing on the Ruhr area city and its residents. But politicians, many entrepreneurs and committed citizens do not want to surrender to their fate without a fight. Step by step they are trying to lead their home out of the crisis.
For them, Gelsenkirchen is more than the rehashed story of broken biographies, crumbling facades and bleak future prospects.
For them, Gelsenkirchen is first and foremost a city where people stick together, no matter how bad things are for them. People who don’t let bad news get them down, but keep fighting. People with great achievements in life, who are straightforward, unpretentious and who remain optimistic, despite all adversities.
The average Gelsenkirchen resident loves his city at least as much as people from Hamburg, Munich or Stuttgart love their city.
Of course, there is no Elbphilharmonie here, no English Garden, and the density of Porsches is not quite as high. And perhaps for many people it is a kind of love-hate relationship. One Facebook user sums it up like this: Gelsenkirchen is “simply a feeling”.
But emotions alone do not count. The success or failure of a city is measured by hard facts. And these are often depressing.
One of Gelsenkirchen’s biggest problems is symbolized by a 50-meter-high office tower with a yellow-orange facade in the middle of the city center. A textile discounter and an erotic shop are located on the ground floor. The other 14 floors are used by what is probably the most important authority in the city: the job center. There is a lot to do there.
The cliché that nobody moves to Gelsenkirchen voluntarily is no longer true. For many immigrants, especially from Eastern Europe, the North Rhine-Westphalian city is a place of longing. A paradise in which it is good and pleasant to live.
Gelsenkirchen has always been considered a multicultural city, a place that has had plenty of experience with immigrants, both good and bad. In Rotthausen, the southernmost district of Gelsenkirchen, the development of the last few years can be clearly observed. Around 14,000 people live here, a good 30 percent of whom are foreigners.
Wikipedia describes the district as an “example of successful integration policy and the peaceful coexistence of cultures.” Police reports and official records sometimes read a little differently.
Just a few weeks ago, city employees searched several houses after neighbors had once again complained. The police officers’ findings were impressive: illegal cables that the Romanian residents used to get free electricity, catastrophic hygienic conditions, and numerous cases of welfare fraud.
Parents with six underage children, including an infant, lived in one apartment. The family was not registered with the authorities. Two school-age children had never seen the inside of a school before. In the attic of a house, the officers discovered boxes of clothing, tools, household appliances and cosmetics in their original packaging.
Anyone who walks through some of the streets of Gelsenkirchen-Rotthausen will inevitably be confronted with images that testify to deep poverty and despair, but also to violence and crime. Broken doors, smashed windows, mountains of bulky waste in front of the front doors. Handwritten notes with Eastern European surnames are stuck to the residents’ mailboxes.
Forklift driver Matthias Hebebrand, who has lived in this neighborhood for almost 10 years, has just come home from work. After pulling the empty garbage can from the street, he points to a three-story apartment building. Red brick, smashed front door, garbage-filled backyard. “It’s almost unbearable,” he said.
Hebebrand reports constant noise and shouting, barbecues during which residents burn plastic waste, and adolescent children who roam the streets and show absolutely no respect for German residents. Mattresses, electrical appliances, leftover food, even used baby diapers have been thrown out of the windows.
“The worst thing is the noise of the rampaging rats that climb into the garbage cans and then try to get out again,” says the 45-year-old. The scratching on the inside walls, the rattling of the lids, “really terrible.”
The city had already cleared the problem house, but it did not take long before new extended families moved in there.
While Hebebrand talks about the situation in his neighborhood, new neighbors are already on the way. Six newcomers – three women, three men – are squatting on a street corner between rolling suitcases and stuffed bags.
When the reporter asked what they wanted in Gelsenkirchen, one of the women replied: “We want to live here.”
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