Introduction

Focused on issues of gentrification, the ‘Free Cuvry’ camp existed from March 2012 until September 2014 and was one of Berlin's most visible post-Occupy protest camps. The camp attracted a lot of attention, with reactions ranging from outright condemnation to uncritical idolisation. Many people – whether protest campers, local residents or visitors – also experienced Free Cuvry as extremely complex, contradictory and unpredictable. While, at times, it was a protest camp against gentrification, it was also a refuge, an anarchist utopia, a ‘no rules’ zone, a crime scene, a health hazard, an expression of Berlin's housing shortage and an indicator of Berlin's increasing social polarisation. Based in Berlin's district of Kreuzberg, adjacent to the river Spree, it was located on prime privately owned real estate. During its existence, it was inhabited by up to 120 people from a variety of backgrounds, including a number of recent migrants to the city, temporary visitors and tourists.

The Free Cuvry protest camp combined the expressive and activist features of a protest camp against gentrification and the features of a tent city (Heben, 2012), a semi-autonomous shelter and refuge for some of Berlin poorest inhabitants. In their self-organisation the campers made several attempts at reconciling the camp's dual characteristics as both a protest camp and a tent city: providing autonomous organised housing and care, while blocking the development of high-end speculative real estate. The challenges encountered in the process are paralleled in the ways that many urban protest camps consist of political organising and the providing of autonomous care and social reproduction (Feigenbaum et al, 2013).

This chapter draws on reflections on protest camps (Feigenbaum et al, 2013; Frenzel et al, 2014) and tent cities (Heben, 2012) to situate Free Cuvry. We focus in particular on the tensions between the protest camp's political character and its attempts at providing autonomous care and social reproduction. Our purpose is to better understand how these tensions materialise, for example around expending resources to provide care, the varied ability of more destitute participants to find time to take part in political debates, and the question of how to successfully build coalitions between different campers. Such concerns have been touched upon in discussions of previous camp experiences, for example in the context of Occupy camps (Halvorsen, 2015; Schein, 2012; Ehrenreich, 2011).