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Redefining Urban Citizenship: Italian Migrants and Housing Occupations in 1970s Frankfurt am Main

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 October 2022

Sarah Jacobson Open the ORCID record for Sarah Jacobson [Opens in a new window]
Sarah Jacobson*
Affiliation:
Leibniz Institute for European History, Alte Universitätsstraße 19, 55116 Mainz, Germany
*
Jacobson@ieg-mainz.de
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Abstract

This article examines an overlooked group of participants within 1970s housing occupation movements in Western Europe – migrants. More specifically, I analyse Italian migrants’ participation in housing occupations in the city of Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, from 1970–3. By engaging in visible protest, Italian migrant occupiers performed ‘acts of urban citizenship’ that ruptured understandings of localised citizenship and belonging. This case study thus illuminates two interrelated historic phenomena: (1) how social rights became de-territorialised and attached to the individual rather than the nation-state; and (2) how the city became a crucial site of citizenship formation, even across national borders.

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Article
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Contemporary European History , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , May 2024 , pp. 634 - 650
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Leaflet, 18 Oct. 1972, Institut für Stadtgeschichte Frankfurt am Main (IfS), Ortsgeschichte. 1972: Hausbesetzungen, S3/A 10.210.

2 amantine, Gender und Häuserkampf (Münster: UNRAST-Verlag, 2011), 17. amantine does not capitalise their name.

3 I shall hereafter refer to Frankfurt am Main simply as Frankfurt.

4 See Reichardt, Sven, Authentizität und Gemeinschaft: Linksalternatives Leben in den siebziger und frühen achtziger Jahren (Berlin: Suhrkampf, 2014)Google Scholar and Sedlmaier, Alexander, Consumption and Violence: Radical Protest in Cold-War West Germany (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2014)Google Scholar. The association between squatting and generally young, native-born activists who were part of far-left political groups is not limited to the West German context, but is prevalent in other areas in Western Europe and North America. For an overview see Bart van der Steen, Leendert van Hoogenhuijze and Ask Katzeff, eds., The City Is Ours: Squatting and Autonomous Movements in Europe from the 1970s to the Present (Oakland: PM Press, 2014).

5 Karakayali, Serhat, ‘Across Bockenheimer Landstraße’, Diskus, 2 (2000), 7Google Scholar, available at https://diskus.copyriot.com/stadt-statt-stadt/across-bockenheimer-landstrasse (last visited Apr. 2022).

6 Freia Anders and Alexander Sedlmaier also highlight that ‘research on [squatting in] the rich countries of the Global North has only rarely related the topics of poverty and squatting to each other’, frequently portraying housing occupations as the product of youth and/or autonomous movements while leaving out marginalised populations. See Freia Anders and Alexander Sedlmaier, eds., Public Goods Versus Economic Interests: Global Perspectives on the History of Squatting (New York: Routledge, 2017). In his recent transnational survey of squatting movements, Alexander Vasudevan takes care to highlight the diversity of ‘everyday practices and political imaginations of squatters’ (8). Yet only very rarely does he discuss migrant participants. See Alexander Vasudevan, The Autonomous City: A History of Urban Squatting (New York: Verso, 2017). Even in van der Steen, Bart, van Rooden, Charlotte and Snoep, Merel, ‘Who are the Squatters? Challenging Stereotypes through a Case Study of Squatting in the Dutch City of Leiden, 1970–1980’, Journal of Urban History, 46, 6 (2020), 1368–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, the researchers only focus on working-class families and alternative youths while trying to diversify the participants.

7 Pierpaolo Mudu and Sutapa Chattopadhyay, eds., Migration, Squatting and Radical Autonomy: Resistance and Destabilization of Racist Regulatory Policies and B/Ordering Mechanisms (New York: Routledge, 2016), 9. Activists and researchers who are part of the Squatting everywhere kollective (SqEK) – including Mudu and Chattopadhyay – are among those who have recently tried to illustrate the heterogeneous nature of squatting participants. However, most research that investigates migrant squatters (including the majority of the case studies within Mudu's and Chattopadhyay's anthology) generally focus on the 1980s to the present, excluding the earlier wave of housing occupation movements discussed here.

8 Though concerned about shelter, I will also show how migrants’ social position moved their actions beyond the category of ‘deprivation-based squatting’ outlined by Prujit, Hans, ‘The Logic of Urban Squatting’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24, 1 (2012), 19–45Google Scholar.

9 Manuela Bojadžijev, Die windige Internationale: Rassismus und Kämpfe der Migration (Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2008), 12.

10 Engin F. Isin and Greg M. Nielsen, eds., Acts of Citizenship (London: Zed Books, 2008).

11 Karim Fertikh, ‘From Territorialized Rights to Personalized International Rights? The Making of the European Convention on the Social Security of Migrant Workers (1957)’, in Monika Baár and Paul van Trigt, eds., Marginalized Groups, Inequalities and the Post-War Welfare State: Whose Welfare? (New York: Routledge, 2020), 29–48. Étienne Balibar refers to this and related processes as the ‘transnationalization of the political’ when discussing ‘transnational citizenship’, in We, The People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship, translated by James Swenson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).

12 James Holston, ed., Cities and Citizenship (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), viii.

13 See Häuserrat Frankfurt, ed., Wohnungskampf in Frankfurt (Munich: Trikont-Verlag, 1974).

14 Vasudevan, Squatting, 108.

15 For a history of guest worker labour migration to West Germany see Chin, Rita, The Guest Worker Question in Postwar Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

16 Ernst Stracke, Stadtzerstörung und Stadtteilkampf: Innerstädtische Ustrukturierungsprozesse, Wohnungsnot und soziale Bewegungen in Frankfurt am Main (Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1980), 105.

17 Maria Borris, Ausländische Arbeiter in einer Großstadt: Eine empirische Untersuchhung am Beispiel Frankfurt (Frankfurt/M: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1973), 151.

18 Til Schulz, ‘Zum Beispiel Eppsteinerstraße [sic] 47. Wohnungskampf, Hausbesetzung, Wohnkollektiv’, in Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Karl Markus Michel, eds., Kursbuch 27 (Berlin: Kursbuch/Wagenbuch, 1972), 86–7.

19 Interview with Giuseppe Zambon, conducted by author in Frankfurt/M on 20 June 2018.

20 Pamplet, ‘Der brave Bürger, der die bestehenden Gesetze achtet, seinen Mietzins regelmässig zahlt und seinen Protest gegen die hohen Mieten auf Worte beschränkt, ist nicht nur ein Opfer, sondern gleichzeitig auch ein Komplice der Bodenspekulation’, Primo Moroni Archive (PM), uncatalogued.

21 Barbara Sichtermann and Kai Sichtermann, Das ist unser Haus: Eine Geschichte der Hausbesetzung (Berlin: Aufbau, 2017), 118–9.

22 Schulz, ‘Eppsteinerstraße’, 93–4.

23 Ibid., 95–6.

24 Interview with Erna Müller, conducted by author in Frankfurt/M on 3 June 2018.

25 Interview with Giuseppe Zambon, conducted by author in Frankfurt/M on 20 June 2018.

26 Kathleen Canning, ‘Reflections on the Vocabulary of Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Germany’, in Geoff Eley and Jan Palmowski, eds., Citizenship and National Identity in Twentiety-Century Germany (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 231.

27 James Holston, ‘Housing Crises, Right to the City, and Citizenship’, in Edward Murphy and Najib B. Hourani, eds., The Housing Question: Tensions, Continuities and Contingencies in the Modern City (London: Ashgate, 2013), 262.

28 Schulz, ‘Eppsteinerstraße’, 90.

29 Albert Bechtold, ‘Sympathien für die Eppsteiner Straße 47’, Stuttgarter Nachrichten nr. 239.

30 Peter Alles, ‘Haus Eppsteiner Straße 47 wurde vom Kollektiv wieder bewohnbar gemacht’, Frankfurter Neue Presse (FNP), 7 Oct. 1970.

31 For a similar discussion in a separate context see Edward Murphy, For a Proper Home: Housing Rights in the Margins of Urban Chile, 1960–2010 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015).

32 Open letter to the mayor, 20 Sept. 1970, IfS, 1970: Hausbesetzungen. S3/A 9588.

33 Albert Bechtold, ‘Sympathien’.

34 ‘Arbeiter und Studenten…viele Sympathiebeweise’, Frankfurter Rundschau (FR), 21 Sept. 1970.

35 ‘Die Diskussion um das Westendhaus geht weiter’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), 23 Sept. 1970.

36 Interview with Erna Müller, conducted by author in Frankfurt/M on 3 June 2018.

37 Claudia Michels, ‘Im Frankfurter Westend began der ‘Häuserkampf’ der 70er Jahre’, FR, 19 Sept. 2000. This was an article published thirty years after the events.

38 ‘Haus-Besetzer rechnen mit Räumung’, FNP, 19 Dec. 1970.

39 Ibid.

40 ‘Jetzt Schluß mit den Hausbeesetzungen’: Möller spricht von verantwortungslosen Initiatoren’, FR, 22 Oct. 1970.

41 ‘Oberbürgermeister versucht sich zu rechtfertigen’, FNP, 22 Oct. 1970.

42 ‘Schlacht um leeres Wohnhaus’, FR, 30 Sept. 1971.

43 ‘Nach dem Straßenschlacht in Frankfurt: SPD-Radikale wollen Polizei-Chef abschießen’, Abendpost, 30 Mar. 1973.

44 Butler, Judith, Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Police Report, ‘31 S 13. Polizeirevier: an die Inspektion West’. 17 Oct. 1972, IfS, Wohnungsamt. 969.

46 amantine, Gender, 17.

47 ‘Hausbesetzung in der Leipzigerstraße’, FAZ, 21 May 1973.

48 Interview with Giuseppe Zambon, conducted by author in Frankfurt/M on 20 June 2018.

49 ‘Hausbesetzung in der Leipzigerstraße’, FAZ, 21 May 1973.

50 ‘Geduld hat sich gelohnt’, FR, 21 May 1973.

51 Hermann Lammert, ‘Wo Ratten huschen und Kakerlaken kriechen’, FR, 30 Sept. 1973.

52 ‘Wir brauchen keine Luxuswohnungen’, FAZ, 29 Aug. 1973.

53 ‘Beschlagnahme leerer Wohnungen gefordern’, FR, 29 Aug. 1973.

54 ‘Neue Phase der Hausbesetzungen’/Jungsozialisten helfen Italienern’, FR, 30 Aug. 1973.

55 Flyer, ‘Schluss mit den Kündigungen!’, IfS, Wohnungsamt. 969.

56 ‘Die Besetzung wurde verhindert’, FNP, 29 Aug. 1973.

57 ‘Ausländer von skrupellosen Wucherern schamlos erpreßt’, WIR, Sept. 1973. Though I have yet to locate information on ‘WIR’, it appears to be a news organ of the Jusos based on tone and information contained.

58 ‘Der Bürgermeister applaudiert dem Versuch einer Hausbesetzung’, FAZ, 30 Aug. 1973. Frankfurt am Main was (and is) such a large city that it was administered by multiple deputy mayors under the leadership of one Oberbürgermeister, or ‘Lord Mayor’. Even though Rudi Arndt was then the Oberbürgermeister, he was assisted by other Bürgermeister.

59 ‘Der Bürgermeister applaudiert dem Versuch einer Hausbesetzung’, FAZ, 30 Aug. 1973.

60 ‘Neue Phase der Hausbesetzungen’/Jungsozialisten helfen Italienern’, FR, 30 Aug. 1973.

61 ‘Protestcamper in der Rothschildallee: Stadt sagt bedrängten Familien Hilfe zu/Zurück ins alte Haus’, FAZ, 30 Aug. 1973.

62 ‘Italiener besetzten Häuser in der Friesengasse’, FR, 3 Sept. 1973.

63 ‘Italiener besetzen Haus in Bockenheim’, FAZ, 3 Sept. 1973.

64 ‘Nur zwei Familien konnten bleiben’, FNP, 3 Sept. 1973.

65 ‘Berg: Hausbesetzung war das Werk von Unruhestiftern’, FNP, 4 Sept. 1973.

66 Official police notice, 11 Sept. 1973, IfS, Wohnraumkonflikte; Untersuchungen zu Arbeitsplatzsituationen im polit. Kontext. V 183/14.

67 Flyer, ‘Frankfurt. Die Stadt’. IfS, Wohnraumkonflikte; Untersuchungen zu Arbeitsplatzsituationen im polit. Kontext. V 183/14.

68 Geoff Eley, ‘Some General Thoughts on Citizenship in Germany’, in Eley and Palmowski, Citizenship, 240.

69 ‘Vertrag mit Hauskollektiv’, FAZ, 13 Jan. 1971. See also Dokumentation des Häuserrates und des Asta der Universität Frankfurt, Kettenhofweg 51, 3.

70 ‘Die Rebellen von gestern sind zu Bürgern geworden’, FR, 23 June 1971.

71 amantine, Gender, 17.

72 ‘Demonstrazionszug am Wochenende’, FAZ, 17 Apr. 1972.

73 Marlies Nehrstede, ‘Wieder eingewiesen, aber nur bis Mai’, FR, 28 Mar. 1973.

74 ‘Schallplatte über den Wohnungskampf’, FR, 16 Apr. 1973.

75 Appel, Rudolf Heinrich, Frankfurt am Main: Stadtentwicklung und Wohnprobleme (Frankfurt/M: Franz Jos. Henrich KG, 1974), 96–102Google Scholar. Commissioned by the Press and Information Department of the City of Frankfurt.

76 Housing office report, ‘Liegenschaft Frankfurt am Main, Bettinastr. 35–7: Verbot der Zweckentfremdung von Wohnraum’, 1 Aug. 1978, IfS, Wohnungsamt. 969.

77 Espahangizi, Raika, ‘Migration and Urban Transformations: Frankfurt in the 1960s and 1970s’, Journal of Contemporary History, 49, 1 (2014), 197CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, ‘Gesetz über den Kündigungsschutz für Mietverhältnisse über Wohnraum’, 25 Nov. 1971. Nr. 118 – Tag der Ausgabe: Bonn, den 27. Nov. 1971, available at https://www.bgbl.de/xaver/bgbl/start.xav#__bgbl__%2F%2F*%5B%40attr_id%3D%27bgbl171s1839.pdf%27%5D__1600977702365 (last visited Sept. 2020).

79 Mudu and Chattopadhyay, Migration, 9.