“Weddingwandler”: meet your neighbours

To res­cue the who­le world in an instant seems to be an idea­li­stic illu­si­on. A rapidly gro­wing group of enga­ged Wed­din­gers wants to start making chan­ges in the imme­dia­te vici­ni­ty and crea­te a new sen­se of ‘tog­e­ther­ness’ in the Kiez.

“The fai­led cli­ma­te sum­mit in Copen­ha­gen show­ed me: the­re won’t be any chan­ge from ‘abo­ve’”, says Juli­an Grö­ger. If some­thing is meant to chan­ge, the move­ment has to come from the citi­zens – this is the idea of the tran­si­ti­on town move­ment, an eco­lo­gi­cal and social initia­ti­ve with many dif­fe­rent ide­as. “Our mate­ria­li­stic socie­ty depends on was­ting fini­te resour­ces”, explains the 31-year old envi­ron­men­tal mana­ger. You can end up pret­ty despe­ra­te if you’­re try­ing to chan­ge any­thing by yours­elf, from was­ting fos­sil resour­ces via indus­tria­li­zed agri­cul­tu­re and the ‘throw-away-socie­ty’ to ever rising housing cos­ts. For Juli­an, it all starts with not accep­ting today’s situa­ti­on as the cli­max of civilization.

You should not just chan­ge yours­elf, but try to get your envi­ron­ment invol­ved: “In order to achie­ve more tog­e­ther, we have to meet our neigh­bours first”, thinks Juli­an. In his Kiez at Utrech­ter Stra­ße this has alre­a­dy star­ted with a com­mu­ni­ty-sup­port­ed agri­cul­tu­re initia­ti­ve. Sin­ce last year, Juli­an and his wife have been try­ing to find like-min­ded peo­p­le to crea­te the tran­si­ti­on town group in Wedding.

The “Wed­ding­wand­lers” – a play on words with the word ‘wan­deln’, which can mean ‘to chan­ge’ as well as ‘to stroll’ – have had seve­ral pro­jects within the last year on the cor­ner of Mal­plaquet­stra­ße and Utrech­ter Stra­ße. One of the­se actions was a free bike repair, for exam­p­le. “What, you don’t want any money for that?”, asked main­ly older peo­p­le living in the Kiez. “We’­re neigh­bours, you know”, was the usu­al rep­ly of the Wed­ding­wand­lers. “To give is a qua­li­ty”, says Juli­an, “but for some peo­p­le it is not easy to accept some­thing eit­her”. The move­ment wants to crea­te a frame for the neigh­bour­hood – one plan is, for exam­p­le, to have a cup­board at Café Tas­sen­ku­chen, whe­re peo­p­le can put stuff for exchange.
The appro­xi­m­ate­ly 20 acti­ve Wed­ding­wand­lers are orga­ni­zed into dif­fe­rent the­ma­tic sub­groups to crea­te models and plan acti­vi­ties. This includes excur­si­ons, sewing work­shops and the com­mu­nal lear­ning of lost know­ledge. “I don’t belie­ve that new cri­ses mean that there’s gon­na be a new era for lar­ge fami­lies”, says Julia. “It would be bet­ter if we pre­pared for the chan­ge by crea­ting a social web as it exis­ted in vil­la­ges in for­mer times. In order to sur­vi­ve in a future with chan­ged basic con­di­ti­ons, each indi­vi­du­al has to learn how to get along with more peo­p­le again”, he believes.
Ber­lin is not a vil­la­ge, and the Wed­ding­wand­lers know that as well. So far, main­ly stu­dents and aca­de­mics bet­ween the age of 20 and 40 are part of the team, but the neigh­bour­hood-approach con­scious­ly tri­es to attract older peo­p­le and migrants as well. Howe­ver, the word ’neigh­bour­hood’ its­elf high­lights the limi­ta­ti­ons of the tran­si­ti­on town move­ment: The idea of small-sca­le, strong struc­tures can only be imple­men­ted in a local man­ner. To spread it to the enti­re Wed­ding would be a logi­stic pro­blem. “We need some sort of com­mu­nal intel­li­gence”, says Juli­an. So every Kiez needs a group to fos­ter neigh­bour­hood com­mu­ni­ty and exch­an­ge – may­be that’s how you can res­cue the world…

Trans­la­ti­on: Danie­la Hombach

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