by Ben Knight
Every now and then bad stories filter through to the German newspapers. In May this year, a 66-year-old pensioner in the northern town of Hildesheim clubbed three people to death over an allotment dispute. The flashpoint was a shared path, but the feud had reportedly been building for a long time, with tense threats being exchanged and rubbish being dumped over fences for years. In another incident in April, a 78-year-old man accidentally nearly blinded a 14-year-old boy with a homemade explosive booby-trap he had used to secure his shed.
These terrible stories reinforce the popular clichés about allotments in Germany – they are insular, paranoid mini-societies full of old people with old attitudes. The apples that hang over the fence are guarded with booby-traps, and there are dark mutterings if someone doesn’t clip their hedge to the regulation height.
It is exactly these prejudices that Peter Standfuß, chairman of the allotment club Am Buschkrug, is sensitive to. The Am Buschkrug colony is a cluster of 421 allotments in the genteel part of Neukölln called Britz. Speaking for one of Berlin’s larger colonies near one of its poorer districts, Standfuß is a reformer, despite remembering growing up on an allotment colony in the 50s. He regularly organises children’s festivals, complete with bungee jumping, at which 2,000 guests are expected every year.
His plans for a multicultural festival have had to be shelved, however. Some of the older Laubenpieper – the cosy German name for allotment keepers – are apparently not quite ready for it. “Things are changing. Nearly every other applicant for a new allotment is of immigrant background nowadays. We have more and more Turks, Poles, Greeks and Arabs getting allotments. It is a new challenge for some of our older members. But it’s important, because it’s the future. I think it might be time we got a Turkish member on the board.”
But Berlin’s allotment scene is a wide umbrella. Many inner-city colonies are apparently attracting new generations for various reasons. Modern parents see allotments as an antidote to the anonymity and artifice of modern society. They want to teach their kids where food comes from, and defying the clichés of paranoia, almost all allotment-owners talk about the communal atmosphere of the colony, about colonists helping each other and lending each other equipment. Peter Ehrenberg, chairman of the Berlin German Garden Friends (BDG), an allotment community umbrella organisation, was recently quoted as saying, “A garden demands and promotes restraint and cooperation, because you have to show consideration for others. I see that as an enhancement in our anonymous society.”
But Standfuß suspects that young people are put off by the rules. Getting an allotment in Germany means submitting to the formidable Bundeskleingartengesetz, a law which defines not only the size but the purpose of allotments. To lease a plot of land from the German state, you have to use it productively.
For instance, the Bundeskleingartengesetz contains a ‘30 – 30 – 30′ rule: at least 30 percent of the garden be used to grow fruit or vegetables, 30 percent may be built on, and a maximum of 30 percent may be used for ‘recreation’. It is also illegal to live on your allotment, or to install facilities that make it permanently habitable, which is why some German states do not allow electricity or running water on allotments. Sewage, though, is a grey area. “The toilet question is heavily debated,” Standfuß observes sagely.
If the Bundeskleingartengesetz doesn’t get you, then the board might. Colonies have their own idiosyncratic rules. At the Am Buschkrug colony, for example, everyone must have at least two fruit trees, while the obligatory frontal hedges must be kept at a height of between 50cm and 1.25 metres. The Schutzverband colony in Steglitz has the same rule, and also stipulates there must be no noise between 1pm and 3pm, or after 4pm.
But the ruling committees are more flexible than they seem, and are willing to be moderate. Standfuß is eager to point out that the ‘30 – 30 – 30′ rule can apply to the whole colony. If someone shirks their vegetable-growing duties, someone else can compensate – it all depends on the averages. And Helmut Sonnenberg, chairman of the Schutzverband colony likes to assure people that “if someone’s hedge is 1.30 or 1.35 metres, we don’t say anything.”
The relatively liberal standards in Berlin allotments are due to the city’s history. Having been created in the late nineteenth century as a way to curb the development of industrial slums, allotments caught on and were formalised by the German authorities in the 1920’s. Their hour of fulfilment arrived during and after World War II, when they fed and sheltered the decimated population. Allotments took on a special significance in West Berlin, where they represented precious patches of greenery in the walled city.
These secret gardens, then, with their clay figurines, curious owners and complex rules have protected Berliners from the damage of a whole century, and are now preparing for a new generation.
A slightly different version of this article originally appeared in EXBERLINER magazine July/August 2009.
Photography: Emile Holba www.emileholba.co.uk
