Dear readers, of course we have also been following the „cityscape debate“ following the Chancellor’s statements and of course we also have an opinion on it. There are already very good, very well-founded statements and reactions, some of which we have also posted on our social media channels.
My family lives in Berlin and anyone who lives and grows up in Berlin comes into contact with many different people every day. The school classes, the sports clubs, the doctors‘ surgeries, the buses, the daycare groups – everywhere people with different skin colours, from different nations.
My family lives in Berlin and anyone who lives and grows up in Berlin comes into contact with many different people every day. The school classes, the sports clubs, the doctors‘ surgeries, the buses, the daycare groups – everywhere people with different skin colours, from different nations. One of my son’s best friends fled Iraq with his family when he was a baby, his parents have jobs, his older siblings have completed an apprenticeship and are working, and the whole family has now had a German passport for a few weeks.
I can’t imagine how this family must feel about Friedrich Merz’s statements. Didn’t Friedrich Merz want to be the chancellor for everyone? How awful it must be to know that you are seen as a nuisance?
Now the Chancellor’s statements are subliminally about how we women (and our daughters) are constantly being harassed by people with a migration background. Yes, I myself have also had stupid situations with men from a migrant background. Just like I’ve had stupid situations with German men, younger men and older men. With drunk men, with individual men, with men in a group. I don’t actually know any woman who has never been sexually affirmed in her life.
So why I’m now commenting on the debate after all is the fact that my 14-year-old daughter was molested on the underground last week. At half past seven in the morning, when the carriage was full of working people, a young man sat next to her, uncomfortably close, and started chatting her up and asking her questions. Incidentally, the man had no migration background. When she didn’t respond to his questions, he tried to touch her stomach and chest, whereupon she shouted at him and slapped his hands away.
The man insulted her and then got out. But what makes me at least as angry as the fact that in 2025 there are still young men who think they have the right to touch girls is the fact that NOBODY helped my daughter. No one stepped in when he got too close to her and she was obviously uncomfortable. No one asked her if she needed help when he was talking all over her and trying to grab her. A 14-year-old girl was completely on her own in this situation. Even after she shouted at him, nobody reacted.
More important than the cityscape debate
Instead of discussing the cityscape, we need to talk about the men who know no boundaries, who think they can behave however they want. And we need to talk about why a bunch of adults would rather look at the ground or out of the window when a child is in distress than show moral courage. Both issues leave me stunned, because it’s not a good feeling not to be able to tell my daughter after an incident like this that it will never happen again. But that such assaults by men will probably happen all her life…
To put it clearly: I don’t care where someone comes from or what they look like as long as they behave properly. No one should harass women and no one should look the other way when it happens.
