The Poor Millionaires of Grunewald

Renters getting kicked out of their apartments so landlords can renovate, glaze everything in steel and glass, and re-let at four times the price—that’s old news in cities like Berlin. The displaced move outward, suburb by suburb, further from the center with each cycle, away from whoever gets to stay. It’s a grinding, familiar story, and the people it happens to have very few options.

So it was illuminating to learn, via a recent satirical investigation by a German late-night TV team, that gentrification has now reached Berlin’s wealthiest district, Grunewald—and that the victims are millionaires. Billionaires, apparently, have been snapping up the best properties, forcing their less-wealthy neighbors into unconscionable conditions: pre-war villas, aging parquet floors, a mere 500 square meters of living space. Like animals, the report suggests. The inhumanity of it is almost too much to comprehend.

The piece is pure deadpan satire, and it’s very good at what it does—using the language of social-justice reportage to describe the suffering of people who have more money than you will ever see. The "victims" are presented with complete seriousness. Their plight is framed with the same gravity usually reserved for actual displacement. The joke lands because the mechanism is identical; only the scale of wealth is different.

So the next time you’re evicted from your apartment in Kreuzberg or Prenzlauer Berg because the owner would prefer someone who buys organic and carries the right phone—don’t complain. Somewhere in Grunewald, a millionaire is enduring a very difficult situation on 500 square meters of hardwood flooring. Have some perspective.