It didn’t happen all at once, the realisation that Iván Gábor could no longer stay in his home country of Hungary. “I started to wake up almost every night, always with the same question: if there was a big demonstration against the regime tomorrow and I was standing there, knowing that during the whole day I’m working as part of this system, am I morally really allowed to do anything, to say anything?” he says. Before Gábor left Budapest for Berlin in 2016, he worked for two decades as a communications consultant with the country’s contracted ad agencies, who he says partner closely with Viktor Orban’s autocratic regime.
“It’s not acceptable that during my working life I close my eyes.” On the streets of Budapest, the Syrian refugee crisis highlighted Hungary’s institutionalised and cultural racism, Gábor says. Inside his family’s home, dinner parties grew quieter and quieter as their once-lively circle of friends dwindled; not everyone shared in their horror at the transition from a post-Soviet democracy to Orban’s populist government. Gábor had been in Budapest since birth, but at age 50, it was time to go.
We believe in grassroots movements – then we don’t need to wait for the politicians.
Now, after eight years in Berlin, Gábor sees the rise of far-right populist politics in Germany as too close for comfort. The difference is, he says, that democracy works here – but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a need for improvement. The nearly one million people who reside in Berlin without a German passport – 946,369 people, making up 24.5% of the overall population – might take part in the democratic process if they knew they could, says Gábor, who applied for German citizenship last August and was still waiting at the time of writing.
That’s why he and fellow Berlin-based Hungarian Barbara Vid founded Wahlheymat in September, as a platform to connect, engage and inspire Berliners to work toward a city where everyone can feel a sense of agency. The name Wahlheymat is a spin on the German term Wahlheimat, or chosen home, and the English greeting. “It tells you that Heimat itself is changing,” Gábor claims.
“Society is changing, Berlin is changing,” Vid adds. In 2022, the percentage of foreigners was 22% – the number of Germans fell by about 14,500, and the number of foreigners jumped by about 92,000. In 2023, the number of foreigners rose again by about 46,000, and even more Germans left. If things continue this way, the quarter of Berlin who are non-citizens will only grow.
Manifesto destiny
But before anyone gets their Lederhosen in a twist, empowering Berlin’s foreign cohort isn’t about subverting Germans. “We really believe in co-creation with Germans, with the institutions, to find ways [to come] together,” says Vid. “How might we empower foreigners and newcomers to be an active part of the political social life? We see a lot of opportunities, we see the million people who don’t have voting rights – they have different perspectives, they can support the system, to renew and refresh [it]. We believe in grassroots movements – then we don’t need to wait for the politicians.” When you leave people out, you fuel movements like the rising far-right, says Vid, and Wahlheymat wants to make it easy to find avenues for participation.
If they do not find a way to make this administratively a more liveable space, even the best entrepreneurs will start to leave.
It’s a big, admirable goal – but for now the organisation is very much in the idea-generation stage, and Berliners will have to stay tuned to see how they put their words into action. The group has a six-point manifesto, which includes strengthening communities at the Kiez level, using technology to gain more influence, instating English as a second administrative language and a promise to run in local elections as a Wahlgemeinschaft, or voting bloc. It might seem like they’re an organisation with too many ideas to get off the ground – but they’re making real progress.
Since the start of the year, the 10 core members have registered the group as an official association and received a grant from the Berliner Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung (agency for civic education) to engage non-German EU citizens in the EU elections in June. They’ve designed easy-to-understand Facebook groups for various European communities in Berlin and organised social media activities to reach first-time voters, which newly include all EU citizens from the age of 16.
In these elections, more than 20 million people are typically excluded from voting because they don’t have EU citizenship, says Elif Eralp, Die Linke parliamentarian for Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and committee spokesperson for migration, participation and anti-discrimination. This, Eralp says, represents a major deficit of democratic participation. In the Bundestag elections, almost a quarter of Berlin residents are left out because they don’t have a German passport.
“People must be involved in decisions that directly affect them – this is an important democratic principle. Only in this way can decisions be given legitimacy,” says Eralp. “The exclusion of people who enrich this country and have also helped to build it leads to exclusion and discrimination and can result in people turning away from politics rather than getting involved.”
Empower hour
It’s something that comes into focus after several years in a new place: finding a flat, a job, even a romantic partner often all come down to someone knowing someone who knows someone. At one of Wahlheymat’s monthly workshop-style events in December 2023, Give Something Back to Berlin nonprofit founder Annamaria Olsson spoke about the “erasure of networks” that migrants face when arriving here. Not having existing connections, often not even having the context to recognize where exactly to look, can make this city be especially difficult for newcomers, says Vid.
How might we empower foreigners and newcomers to be an active part of the political social life?
“Where to find the information is difficult, you just don’t know where to start and it’s easier to ask a friend.” That’s why Wahlheymat is working on multiple projects to centralise existing NGOs, migration organisations and businesses in one place, to strengthen the visibility of existing organisations and create a network for civic engagement. They’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, they’re trying to make sure you find the wheel in the first place.
Beyond simply helping people locate resource groups, Wahlheymat is facilitating communication between them, Gábor says. “There are very strong small communities that are living here as closed communities, Neukölln’s Arabic community or the Charlottenburg Russian community – they don’t have much to do with each other,” he says. “It’s very hard to treat them as one group of people.”
In order to provide a place for people from these various “bubbles of Berlin”, as Vid calls them, to connect, Wahlheymat is in talks with Berlin’s Senator for Culture and Social Cohesion, Joe Chialo, to potentially run a community space in the soon-to-be-defunct Galerie de Lafayette in Mitte. Wahlheymat also plans to expand their well-attended monthly Wahlheymat Talks series to individual city districts, to bring fruitful conversations on local “pain points”, says Vid.
Germany’s system allows for democratic participation, Vid and Gábor agree, which is why society can and should work to make it all the more inclusive. “It’s about a little bit of restructuring, a little bit of cooperation, a little bit less fear of each other,” says Gábor. In the second half of this year, the team plans to launch wb – short for ‘welcoming and belonging’ – as an “open-source tool” that will serve as a central landing place to inform people on how to participate in all manner of local life: neighbourhood, social, political. “We want to create a platform where you can find [out how] to enter social public life in Berlin… you can treat it like a startup venture: creating a platform [that is] open source and in logical order [where] you can find information which you won’t find. [It’s] all about providing information independently from the city.”
Building bridges
With more information and access, even those not officially enfranchised might feel differently about having a stake in their city. “Most newcomers to Berlin come from diverse backgrounds, which often leads to a sense of confusion and a lack of understanding about the process of the city,” says Zina Hmidan, who’s been a regular Wahlheymat Talks attendee and group member since their inception. “Wahlheymat strives to involve those who wish to participate in political decisions, which helps increase political awareness among newcomers and emphasises the importance of being active and constructive members of the community.”
The appetite for civic engagement amongst non-Germans in Berlin is there, says Die Linke’s Eralp, something the 2021 Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen campaign made obvious. The housing expropriation campaign gathered signatures from everyone living in Berlin who would sign, regardless of citizenship. Thirty percent of the signatures were deemed invalid – most because the signers were not citizens, says Eralp. “It shows that commitment and participation increase when real participation is made possible,” says Eralp.
The bottom line, says Gábor, is that without a feeling of belonging, or community, Wahlberliner won’t have much reason to stay long-term. That leaves Berlin with a portion of the population constantly in flux and without any real reason to care about the things that affect long-term residents. “From a basic capital investment standpoint, Berlin has to do better to ensure longevity. If they do not find a way to make this administratively a more liveable space, even the best entrepreneurs will start to leave.”
To Hmidan, Wahlheymat is well on its way to bridge just this gap. “I believe that opening the door for everyone to participate and join the community, giving everyone the chance to be part of it without specific conditions, fosters a sense of responsibility and belonging,” she says. “This allows [people] to feel like part of the community, even if their capabilities are limited, making them feel like they are individuals and not just numbers.”
- For more info visit the Wahlheymat website.
