Residents of German social housing legacy still pay 'Middle Age rents'
When German pensioner Angelika Stibi got the keys to her new home in the southern region of Bavaria this year, a huge financial weight was lifted from her shoulders.
Stibi has to pay just 88 euro cents a year for her apartment in the social housing complex known as the Fuggerei, where rents have not gone up since the Middle Ages.
Founded in 1521 by the wealthy businessman Jakob Fugger and believed to be the oldest such project in the world, the Fuggerei in the city of Augsburg provides living space for 150 residents facing financial hardship.
Consisting of several rows of yellow terraced buildings with green shutters and sloping red roofs, the complex still resembles a medieval village.
"I had a truly wonderful life until I was 55," said Stibi, a mother of two in her 60s from Augsburg.
After she was diagnosed with cancer, "everything went from bad to worse" and she was left with no other option but to apply for social housing, she said.
Waiting lists are long for apartments in the walled enclave not far from Augsburg city centre, with most applicants having to wait "between two and six or seven years", according to resident social worker Doris Herzog.
"It all depends on the apartment you want. The ones on the ground floor are very popular," Herzog said.
Applicants must be able to prove that they are Augsburg residents, Catholic and suffering from financial hardship.
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Relative of Mozart
Martha Jesse has been living at the Fuggerei for 17 years after finding herself with monthly pension payments of just 400 euros, despite having worked for 45 years.
An inner view shows Martha Jesse's flat in the Fuggerei in Augsburg. (Photo by Michaela STACHE / AFP)
"Living elsewhere would have been almost impossible," said the 77-year-old, whose apartment is filled with religious symbols.
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The Fuggerei was heavily damaged in World War II but has since been rebuilt in its original style.
Renowned composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's great-grandfather, the mason Franz Mozart, was once a resident and visitors can still see a stone plaque bearing his name.
READ ALSO:
'Nachzahlung' - What are the rules around additional housing costs in Germany?
For Andreas Tervooren, a 49-year-old night security guard who has lived at the Fuggerei since 2017, the complex is "like a town within a town" or "the Asterix village in the comic books".
The meagre rents at the Fuggerei are all the more remarkable given its location an hour's drive from Munich, the most expensive city in Germany to live in and one of the most expensive in Europe.
Rents have also risen sharply in many other German cities in recent years, leading to a wave of protests.
READ ALSO:
Which German cities are the most in need of new housing?
But not at the Fuggerei, whose founders stipulated that the rent should never be raised.
Daily prayer
Jakob Fugger (1459-1525), also known as Jakob the Rich, was a merchant and financier from a wealthy family known for its ties to European emperors and the Habsburg family.
Fugger set up several foundations to help the people of Augsburg, and they continue to fund the upkeep of the Fuggerei to this day.
The annual rent in the Fuggerei was one Rhenish gulden, about the weekly wage of a craftsman at the time -- equivalent to 88 cents in today's money.
Although some descendants of the Fugger family are still involved in the management of the foundations, they no longer contribute any money.
"We are financed mainly through income from forestry holdings, and we also have a small tourism business," said Daniel Hobohm, administrator of the Fugger foundations.
The Fuggerei attracts a steady stream of visitors, and the foundations also receive rental income from other properties.
In return for their lodgings, residents of the Fuggerei must fulfil just one condition -- every day, they must recite a prayer for the donors and their families.
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Local Germany
15 hours ago
- Local Germany
Residents of German social housing legacy still pay 'Middle Age rents'
When German pensioner Angelika Stibi got the keys to her new home in the southern region of Bavaria this year, a huge financial weight was lifted from her shoulders. Stibi has to pay just 88 euro cents a year for her apartment in the social housing complex known as the Fuggerei, where rents have not gone up since the Middle Ages. Founded in 1521 by the wealthy businessman Jakob Fugger and believed to be the oldest such project in the world, the Fuggerei in the city of Augsburg provides living space for 150 residents facing financial hardship. Consisting of several rows of yellow terraced buildings with green shutters and sloping red roofs, the complex still resembles a medieval village. "I had a truly wonderful life until I was 55," said Stibi, a mother of two in her 60s from Augsburg. After she was diagnosed with cancer, "everything went from bad to worse" and she was left with no other option but to apply for social housing, she said. Waiting lists are long for apartments in the walled enclave not far from Augsburg city centre, with most applicants having to wait "between two and six or seven years", according to resident social worker Doris Herzog. "It all depends on the apartment you want. The ones on the ground floor are very popular," Herzog said. Applicants must be able to prove that they are Augsburg residents, Catholic and suffering from financial hardship. Advertisement Relative of Mozart Martha Jesse has been living at the Fuggerei for 17 years after finding herself with monthly pension payments of just 400 euros, despite having worked for 45 years. An inner view shows Martha Jesse's flat in the Fuggerei in Augsburg. (Photo by Michaela STACHE / AFP) "Living elsewhere would have been almost impossible," said the 77-year-old, whose apartment is filled with religious symbols. Advertisement The Fuggerei was heavily damaged in World War II but has since been rebuilt in its original style. Renowned composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's great-grandfather, the mason Franz Mozart, was once a resident and visitors can still see a stone plaque bearing his name. READ ALSO: 'Nachzahlung' - What are the rules around additional housing costs in Germany? For Andreas Tervooren, a 49-year-old night security guard who has lived at the Fuggerei since 2017, the complex is "like a town within a town" or "the Asterix village in the comic books". The meagre rents at the Fuggerei are all the more remarkable given its location an hour's drive from Munich, the most expensive city in Germany to live in and one of the most expensive in Europe. Rents have also risen sharply in many other German cities in recent years, leading to a wave of protests. READ ALSO: Which German cities are the most in need of new housing? But not at the Fuggerei, whose founders stipulated that the rent should never be raised. Daily prayer Jakob Fugger (1459-1525), also known as Jakob the Rich, was a merchant and financier from a wealthy family known for its ties to European emperors and the Habsburg family. Fugger set up several foundations to help the people of Augsburg, and they continue to fund the upkeep of the Fuggerei to this day. The annual rent in the Fuggerei was one Rhenish gulden, about the weekly wage of a craftsman at the time -- equivalent to 88 cents in today's money. Although some descendants of the Fugger family are still involved in the management of the foundations, they no longer contribute any money. "We are financed mainly through income from forestry holdings, and we also have a small tourism business," said Daniel Hobohm, administrator of the Fugger foundations. The Fuggerei attracts a steady stream of visitors, and the foundations also receive rental income from other properties. In return for their lodgings, residents of the Fuggerei must fulfil just one condition -- every day, they must recite a prayer for the donors and their families.
DW
16 hours ago
- DW
Resisting oblivion: 70 years of the Leo Baeck Institute – DW – 06/18/2025
The Nazis wanted to destroy Jewish life in Germany. Jewish intellectuals founded the Leo Baeck Institute ten years after the Holocaust to save the nation's diverse German-Jewish heritage. When the German rabbi Leo Baeck was liberated from the Theresienstadt concentration camp on May 8, 1945, the day the war ended, he no longer believed in a future for Jewish people in Germany. Who wanted to live in the country that had planned to exterminate German Jewry and murdered millions? "The era of the Jews in Germany," Baeck said at the time, "is over once and for all." This assessment was shared by most survivors at the time. But what would become of centuries of German Jewish culture? Who would remember the music of Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Arnold Schönberg, the literature of Joseph Roth, Franz Kafka, Alfred Döblin or Else Lasker-Schüler? Even during the years of persecution, preserving German-Jewish cultural heritage was part of the resistance, says the Israeli-Austrian historian, Doron Rabinovici. After 1945, when the full extent of the Holocaustbecame visible, this task seemed all the more urgent. "Remembrance was also resistance against forgetting, against erasure," he told DW of the attempted destruction of Jewish culture during 12 years of Nazi rule. The Leo Baeck Institute in New York is one of three set up in major emigration points for German Jewry, including London and Jerusalem Image: Max Stein/Imago Showing what the Nazis destroyed In 1955, ten years after World War II ended, a group of German-speaking Jewish intellectuals including philosopher Hannah Arendt and historian Gershom Scholem founded the Leo Baeck Institute (LBI) "to show what the Nazis had destroyed," explained Michael Brenner, professor of Jewish history and culture at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. The institute would celebrate "cultural achievements, but also the everyday life of German Jews," said Brenner, who has also been the president of the Institute since 2013. The LBI was named after Rabbi Leo Baeck, the "great religious and spiritual shining light of liberal German Jewry,' the historian added. Baeck became the first president, but died in 1956, one year after the institute was founded. New York, London and Jerusalem were the most important destinations for Jewish emigrants after the war, and these were also the three locations of the LBI. The myth of Germany's post-Nazi 'zero hour' explained To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Research institute promoting German Jewish heritage What made the LBI special from the very beginning was its collection of historical objects come mostly from Jewish refugees or their descendants: Books, letters, photos, and also works of art. Today, the LBI is the most important research institute for the heritage of German Jewry. The majority of the LBI collections have been digitized and made accessible online, with scholars and descendants of Jewish survivors globally using the service comprising more than 3.5 million pages. An annual yearbook is also published, events are organized, and young people in science are supported. The LBI also produced the four-volume standard work, "German-Jewish History in the Modern Era." Work is currently underway on a history of the German-Jewish diaspora. Some might be surprised to know that the LBI has existed so long, but few might have expected a branch to open in Berlin. As contemporary witnesses die out and descendants lose touch with their origins, the LBI is trying to keep interest in German-Jewish cultural heritage alive with new projects. These include the podcast "Exile,' narrated by German actress Iris Berben, which is based on letters, diaries and interviews from the LBI archive. Aimed at a younger audience, the podcast tells stories of people whose lives have been shaped by exile, flight or persecution. Commemorating the victims of World War II and Nazi Germany To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Attacks on academic life also threaten the LBI While the renowned research institute is celebrating its 70th birthday in 2025, this should not obscure the fact that its members, especially in the US, feel that their academic work is under threat. 'The situation in the USA, has not been made any easier by the attacks on academic life," said Michael Brenner of government policies to cut funding across universities. Historian and author Doron Rabinovici also sees a further threat from the global rise of right-wing parties. Leo Baeck's assessment in 1945 that Jewish life in Germany was over has not come true. But what will the next few years bring? A "resurgent Jewish existence" is only possible in an open society in which antisemitism is combated, warns Rabinovici. And combating antisemitismis not possible with right-wing extremists. In Germany, the 70th anniversary of the Leo Baeck Institute will be celebrated with a ceremony under the patronage of Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Speakers at this event will be the President of the LBI, Michael Brenner, and the Austrian historian and writer Doron Rabinovici. Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer dies To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
Int'l Business Times
a day ago
- Int'l Business Times
New Rules May Not Change Dirty And Deadly Ship Recycling Business
Mizan Hossain fell 10 metres (33-foot) from the top of a ship he was cutting up on Chittagong beach in Bangladesh -- where the majority of the world's maritime giants meet their end -- when the vibrations shook him from the upper deck. He survived, but his back was crushed. "I can't get up in the morning," said the 31-year-old who has a wife, three children and his parents to support. "We eat one meal in two, and I see no way out of my situation," said Hossain, his hands swollen below a deep scar on his right arm. The shipbreaking site where Hossain worked without a harness did not comply with international safety and environmental standards. Hossain has been cutting up ships on the sand without proper protection or insurance since he was a child, like many men in his village a few kilometres inland from the giant beached ships. One of his neighbours had his toes crushed in another yard shortly before AFP visited Chittagong in February. Shipbreaking yards employ 20,000 to 30,000 people directly or indirectly in the sprawling port on the Bay of Bengal. But the human and environmental cost of the industry is also immense, experts say. The Hong Kong Convention on the Recycling of Ships, which is meant to regulate one of the world's most dangerous industries, is set to come into effect on June 26. But many question whether its rules on handling toxic waste and protecting workers are sufficient or if they will ever be properly implemented. Only seven out of Chittagong's 30 yards meet the new rules about equipping workers with helmets, harnesses and other protection as well as protocols for decontaminating ships of asbestos and other pollutants and storing hazardous waste. Chittagong was the final destination of nearly a third of the 409 ships dismantled globally last year, according to the NGO coalition Shipbreaking Platform. Most of the others ended up in India, Pakistan, or Turkey. But Bangladesh -- close to the Asian nerve centre of global maritime commerce -- offers the best price for buying end-of-life ships due to its extremely low labour costs, with a minimum monthly wage of around $133 (115 euros). Chittagong's 25-kilometre stretch of beach is the world's biggest ship graveyard. Giant hulks of oil tankers or gas carriers lie in the mud under the scorching sun, an army of workers slowly dismembering them with oxyacetylene torches. "When I started (in the 2000s) it was extremely dangerous," said Mohammad Ali, a thickset union leader who long worked without protection dismantling ships on the sand. "Accidents were frequent, and there were regular deaths and injuries." He was left incapacitated for months after being hit on the head by a piece of metal. "When there's an accident, you're either dead or disabled," the 48-year-old said. At least 470 workers have been killed and 512 seriously injured in the shipbreaking yards of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan since 2009, according to the Shipbreaking Platform NGO. No official death toll is kept in Chittagong. But between 10 and 22 workers a year died in its yards between 2018 and 2022, according to a count kept by Mohamed Ali Sahin, founder of a workers' support centre. There have been improvements in recent years, he said, especially after Dhaka ratified the Hong Kong Convention in 2023, Sahin said. But seven workers still died last year and major progress is needed, he said. The industry is further accused of causing major environmental damage, particularly to mangroves, with oil and heavy metals escaping into the sea from the beach. Asbestos -- which is not illegal in Bangladesh -- is also dumped in open-air landfills. Shipbreaking is also to blame for abnormally high levels of arsenic and other metalloids in the region's soil, rice and vegetables, according to a 2024 study in the Journal of Hazardous Materials. PHP, the most modern yard in the region, is one of few in Chittagong that meets the new standards. Criticism of pollution and working conditions in Bangladesh yards annoys its managing director Mohammed Zahirul Islam. "Just because we're South Asian, with dark skin, are we not capable of excelling in a field?" he told AFP. "Ships are built in developed countries... then used by Europeans and Westerners for 20 or 30 years, and we get them (at the end) for four months. "But everything is our fault," he said as workers in helmets, their faces shielded by plastic visors to protect them from metal shards, dismantled a Japanese gas carrier on a concrete platform near the shore. "There should be a shared responsibility for everyone involved in this whole cycle," he added. His yard has modern cranes and even flower beds, but workers are not masked as they are in Europe to protect them from inhaling metal dust and fumes. But modernising yards to meet the new standards is costly, with PHP spending $10 million to up its game. With the sector in crisis, with half as many ships sent for scrap since the pandemic -- and Bangladesh hit by instability after the tumultuous ousting of premier Sheikh Hasina in August -- investors are reluctant, said John Alonso of the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Chittagong still has no facility to treat or store hazardous materials taken from ships. PHP encases the asbestos it extracts in cement and stores it on-site in a dedicated room. "I think we have about six to seven years of storage capacity," said its expert Liton Mamudzer. But NGOs like Shipbreaking Platform and Robin des Bois are sceptical about how feasible this is, with some ships containing scores of tonnes of asbestos. And Walton Pantland, of the global union federation IndustriALL, questioned whether the Hong Kong standards will be maintained once yards get their certification, with inspections left to local officials. Indeed six workers were killed in September in an explosion at SN Corporation's Chittagong yard, which was compliant with the convention. Shipbreaking Platform said it was symptomatic of a lack of adequate "regulation, supervision and worker protections" in Bangladesh, even with the Hong Kong rules. The NGO's director Ingvild Jenssen said shipowners were using the Hong Kong Convention to bypass the Basel Convention, which bans OECD countries from exporting toxic waste to developing nations. She accused them of using it to offload toxic ships cheaply at South Asian yards without fear of prosecution, using a flag of convenience or intermediaries. In contrast, European shipowners are required to dismantle ships based on the continent, or flying a European flag, under the much stricter Ship Recycling Regulation (SRR). At the Belgian shipbreaking yard Galloo near the Ghent-Terneuzen canal, demolition chief Peter Wyntin told AFP how ships are broken down into "50 different kinds of materials" to be recycled. Everything is mechanised, with only five or six workers wearing helmets, visors and masks to filter the air, doing the actual breaking amid mountains of scrap metal. A wind turbine supplies electricity, and a net collects anything that falls in the canal. Galloo also sank 10 million euros into water treatment, using activated carbon and bacterial filters. But Wyntin said it is a struggle to survive with several European yards forced to shut as Turkish ones with EU certification take much of the business. While shipbreakers in the EU have "25,000 pages of legislation to comply with", he argued, those in Aliaga on the western coast of Turkey have only 25 pages of rules to respect to be "third-country compliant under SRR". Wyntin is deeply worried the Hong Kong Convention will further undermine standards and European yards with them. "You can certify yards in Turkey or Asia, but it still involves beaching," where ships are dismantled directly on the shore. "And beaching is a process we would never accept in Europe," he insisted. Turkish health and safety officials reported eight deaths since 2020 at shipbreaking yards in Aliaga, near Izmir, which specialises in dismantling cruise ships. "If we have a fatality, work inspectors arrive immediately and we risk being shut down," Wyntin told AFP. In April, Galloo lost a bid to recycle a 13,000-tonne Italian ferry, with 400 tonnes of asbestos, to a Turkish yard, Wyntin said. Yet in May, the local council in Aliaga said "hazardous waste was stored in an environmentally harmful manner, sometimes just covered with soil." "It's estimated that 15,000 tons of hazardous waste are scattered in the region, endangering human and environmental health due to illegal storage methods," it said on X, posting photos of illegal dumps. In Bangladesh, Human Rights Watch and the Shipbreaking Platform have reported that "toxic materials from ships, including asbestos" are sometimes "resold on the second-hand market". In Chittagong everything gets recycled. On the road along the beach, shops overflow with furniture, toilets, generators and staircases taken straight from the hulks pulled up on the beach a few metres away. Not far away, Rekha Akter mourned her husband, one of those who died in the explosion at SN Corporation's yard in September. A safety supervisor, his lungs were burned in the blast. Without his salary, she fears that she and their two young children are "condemned to live in poverty. It's our fate," said the young widow. Ships being dismantled on the beach in Chittagong, Bangladesh AFP Widowed: Rekha Akter and her children. Her husband was a safety supervisor at a Chittagong yard AFP This aerial photograph taken on February 18, 2025 shows a general view of a shipbreaking yard at the PHP Ship Breaking and Recycling facility in Bangladesh's southern port city of Chittagong. AFP Workers cut down metal parts at the PHP shipbreaking yard in Chittagong, the most advanced in the region AFP High-tech but struggling: the Galloo shipbreaking yard in Ghent, Belgium AFP Ships are broken down into 50 recyclable materials at Belgium's Galloo, with a windmill generating its power AFP A map of the world showing the countries where end-of-life ships were dismantled in the last ten years, along with the top 10 countries of ownership, based on data from the NGO Shipbreaking Platform AFP Infographic with a satellite image and details about a shipbreaking yard operated by PHP Ship Breaking & Recycling Industries just outside the port city of Chittagong, Bangladesh, where dozens of shipyards stretch along the coastline AFP Infographic explaining the common steps for dismantling ships AFP
