On May 23, a month after the first of Berlin’s public outdoor pools opened for the 2025 season, local musician (and unhappy swimmer) Klaus Blume posted an original song to his YouTube channel. Starting with collaged footage of happy swimmers and docile fish, the video quickly devolves into icy water, a screengrab from the news, and a talking head of Berlin’s Senator for Sport, Iris Spranger, underwater with a shark swimming toward her head.
“In this song I let out my anger that has been building up, because many of Berlin’s outdoor swimming pools will no longer be heated this year,” writes Blume in the caption, noting that the water temperatures have prevented him from swimming his near-daily 1,200 metres. The song’s refrain rages on: “So I have to freeze, I think that’s really mean, or I can just stay at home, and throw my annual pass, which cost €500, into the oven, into the oven!”
The decision not to heat the majority of Berlin’s 14 Freibäder is the latest in a series of controversial choices about the operation of these public spaces. Between price hikes, new security measures, changes to opening times and now the temperatures, many worry that the pools are becoming less accessible to everyday Berliners, who can’t afford private-pool gym memberships or summer getaways to Mallorca to exercise or cool off.
In March, the Berliner Bäder-Betriebe (BBB) – the largest public pool operator in Europe – announced that due to the city’s budget cuts, they would no longer heat their outdoor pools, usually kept at 22°C – a move that would save them €300,000-500,000 depending on the weather. “We found out at short notice that €3 million in subsidies for heating costs will no longer be covered by the state this year,” BBB spokeswoman Martina van der Wehr told The Berliner, adding that they “did not take the decision lightly”. “Heating costs are always particularly high in the months of May and September. At the same time, these months are generally the times with the fewest bathers in the summer pools.”
Still, public backlash was swift. “The outdoor pools are now no longer usable, especially for older people and children,” Brigitte Pieck, 79, told Berliner Zeitung. Swimmer Ralf Wendling of Wilmersdorf launched a petition that garnered over 3,000 signatures, and complained to taz in April that a regular 30-minute workout in the pool is now dangerous. “Your extremities cool down so much that hypothermia can occur. Swimming lessons for children are also out of the question,” he said. (A quarter of Berlin’s third-grade schoolchildren don’t know how to swim, Tagesspiegel recently reported.)
Not everyone is scared off by icier waters. At least one regular Freibad swimmer, an Australian transplant to Neukölln, vowed that the lack of heating “will not be stopping me”. “I kind of think it’s crazy that they have been heating outdoors pools for so long – it’s so obviously a waste of energy,” she says. “If you’re swimming outside you gotta deal with the temperature.”
After a flood of messages, Spranger announced that four pools would be heated after all. Summer should bring further relief: the unheated pool water, which was just 10-13°C when the pools were filled for the season, is expected to climb as the days get hotter and solar absorber systems kick in. But this seems to have done little to warm the hearts of Berlin’s Wasserratten. Entry prices also changed this year; a Freibad day pass now costs €6-€7, up from €5.50, and even reduced rates jumped (though there are discounts for online booking and occupancy levels). This has raised new questions about who can afford to swim in these public spaces.
“People who don’t have much money can’t go on holiday abroad. They need a space to go to in the summer”
Sophie Springer, a Neukölln book publisher who has been swimming for exercise and mental health a few times a week for the last 21 years, thinks the issue is deeper than just temperatures and ticket prices. “It’s not a given that people know how to swim, but for society I think it’s quite important. And to reduce that opportunity I think radically reduces how we are in the world,” the 44-year-old native Berliner says. Springer doesn’t think the city should do anything that limits access to the benefits of swimming – “and especially not through these class boundary points”.
The pools’ already-extensive security measures are intensifying this year as well, in ways that critics worry will push away more bathers. In 2023, a spate of violent incidents at Columbiabad led the Senate to institute an ID requirement for swimmers 13 and older, as well as online book-ahead ticketing, video surveillance and extra security personnel. These policies carried into 2024 – when the number of people banned from the pools jumped by 65% – and will continue this year with the addition of bag checks via metal scanners and body cams for guards. The BBB budgets €1.5 million for pool security, and the pool operator told The Berliner that security was “not the focus” when it came to cutting costs this year: “The safety concept from previous years has proven its worth. This is shown by the low number of incidents last year.”
Some swimmers, though, still find the measures exclusionary. The citizens’ initiative Freibad für Alle complained in a petition that many people can’t buy tickets online because they lack a credit card, PayPal account or device with internet access. “If some people can’t go to the swimming pool for these reasons, it’s discrimination.” The BBB did ease mandatory online booking rules to allow walk-up tickets, but pool occupancy limits mean those without reservations are often still turned away. Freibad für Alle is still concerned that “spontaneous visits to the outdoor pool will become even more difficult” and alleged that “the swimming pool operators are not responding to criticism of the ID requirement … and to reports of incidents in which young swimmers were denied entry due to racism”.
Local Die Linke rep Ferat Koçak called out the pools as a class issue in an interview with The Berliner back in March. “You know, every year, you have some stories about the Schwimmbäder, the outdoor swimming pools. They get tense, it’s overcrowded. But the problem here is not young Arabic or Muslim people – it’s just that we need more swimming pools. People who don’t have much money can’t go on holiday abroad. They need a space to go to in the summer.”
“If some people can’t go to the swimming pool for these reasons, it’s discrimination.”
Spranger has promised that the Senate will invest €370 million in the pools over the next five years, citing new construction and renovation plans for several pools. But when asked by The Berliner whether they hoped to reverse the heating and pricing changes when city belts were less tight, her ministry simply said the budget would be audited appropriately.
Ultimately, the state of Berlin’s pools reminds Sophie Springer, the Neukölln swimmer, of living in London almost 20 years ago, where austerity culture was already underway and she would sometimes swim alone in 12-degree water. “This kind of abandonment of public access was much more advanced there. And it would be a bit of a shame if this is where we are headed.”
