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Flowers and candles at the Oberlinhaus in Potsdam
Photo: Martin Müller / imago images
Suppose that last week a supermarket cashier in a German city killed four of her customers with a knife and seriously injured another customer.
Or suppose a soccer team physiotherapist killed four soccer players and seriously injured another.
It would have been pretty busy.
None of that happened.
But what happened: Four people with disabilities were killed in the Potsdam dormitory in which they lived, and another resident was seriously injured.
A nurse who worked in the home is considered an urgent suspect.
The Oberlinhaus, where the deeds happened, is a Christian institution where people with various disabilities live.
»We give people with disabilities more than a home«, says the website, and under »News«: »We Oberliners mourn four people who had to die tonight.« People who »had to die«, that's the way it is a phrase often read when people have been killed, and usually it is out of place.
Here too.
The two men and two women who were killed didn't actually have to die at all.
Margarete Stokowski
Photo:
Rosanna Graf
Born in 1986, was born in Poland and grew up in Berlin.
She studied philosophy and social sciences and has been working as a freelance writer since 2009.
Her feminist bestseller "Bottom Rum Free" was published in 2016 by Rowohlt Verlag.
This was followed in 2018 by »The Last Days of Patriarchy«, a collection of columns from SPIEGEL and »taz«.
Not much is publicly known about the victims at the moment.
They are said to have been between the ages of 31 and 56 and their throats were severely cut.
The 51-year-old suspect has been taken to a psychiatric ward.
Nothing is known about their motives so far, but of course there is still speculation.
The day after the crime, the rbb broadcast a report on it. "What could induce someone to commit such a deed?" Says the video. “There are many reasons, says police psychologist Dr. Gerd Reimann. "Reimann then names three possible reasons: firstly, conflicts between perpetrators and victims, secondly," a dramatic excessive demands on the perpetrator ", thirdly," a motivation to redeem people from suffering that may even be incurable ".
Dramatic overload?
Salvation from incurable ailments?
Disabilities are not something to be "cured" because they are not diseases.
And "redemption" - seriously?
Under National Socialism, "euthanasia" was considered an "act of redemption without punishment", but that no longer applies today.
Of course, the psychologist in the rbb article does not endorse or justify these acts, but his statement is still questionable.
Would this type of speculation have been considered serious in any other case?
Assuming again that a physiotherapist had killed four soccer players - what would you think if a psychologist said on TV that the physiotherapist might want to free the soccer players from their extremely stressful life as professional athletes?
It would be completely bizarre.
more on the subject
Large-scale operation in Potsdam: Nursing assistant is said to have killed four people - husband called the police
In the media reports on the Potsdam case there was much talk of "shock": "Oberlinhaus in shock", "Shock over the bloody act in the Potsdam Oberlinhaus", "Employees and residents of the facilities of the Oberlinhaus in shock", and so on.
Understandable, on the one hand.
On the other hand, there were many people who were less shocked by the acts in Potsdam than more likely to confirm the fact that people with disabilities are still not adequately protected from violence - often not even in the facilities that were theoretically set up for them.
"The Oberlinhaus has a very good reputation," said a spokesman after the fact. Had, you have to add. However, special facilities for the disabled quite often have a good reputation for bystanders. Often not for people with disabilities or their relatives. There is always discrimination and violence in nursing homes and residential homes for people with disabilities. Women with disabilities also experience sexual violence, on average two to three times more often than the population average, by the time they grow up; this tendency continues among adults.
The activist and author Raul Krauthausen wrote after the deeds in the Oberlinhaus: "Structurally, such facilities harbor a potential for bad things." He also pointed out that the Potsdam mayor had spoken of the "self-sacrificing care" in this facility in his statement and the head of the house about the "extraordinarily committed" employees.
"When it comes to working with people with disabilities, people without disabilities quickly use paternalistic superlatives," writes Krauthausen, "as if it were a kind of 'Mission Impossible' and not a service."
Permanently alone against exclusion
There has been criticism of the various types of facilities for people with disabilities for years, or rather decades. Criticism that is hardly heard For example, workshops in which people with disabilities work have a good reputation among many ignorant people. Non-handicapped people can buy handmade kitchen utensils, soap or candle holders and at the same time have the good feeling of having acquired something from such a workshop, but very few know the working conditions under which these products are made.
The people who work there are not considered employees and accordingly do not receive a minimum wage. Often they earn less than 200 euros, sometimes only 80 - a month. Many workshops have lowered wages even further in the corona pandemic. There are always petitions and campaigns that criticize the payment, most recently with the demand "Hire us!" So far, the wages in workshops for people with disabilities have often been as low as those for prisoners who have to work in prison.
In theory, you don't have to leaf through the Basic Law for a long time before you come across the topic of disability. "Nobody may be disadvantaged because of their disability", says Article 3. In practice, however, the disadvantage of people with disabilities is often anchored directly in the institutions that were specially set up for them.
Very many people with disabilities do not live or work in such facilities, but follow the reports on acts of violence like the one in Potsdam very closely. Tanja Kollodzieyski, who writes on Twitter as »RolliFräulein«, wrote on EditionF about the deeds in Potsdam: »As a disabled person, a bizarre picture was presented to me in the media. (...) Again and again the perspective of the nursing staff was brought into focus, who, in the opinion of many people, perform 'extraordinary'. There is no doubt that the conditions of people who work in nursing need to be improved. But damn it: what about the situation of people with disabilities? "
There can never be "perfect security" for people with disabilities.
But what there could have been for a long time: More interest in their situation, not only when some of them are killed.
"We do not need catastrophe tourism and no sunshine solidarity," wrote Kollodzieyski, "we need allies on an equal footing."
People with disabilities are not "saved" when they are killed.
But you could save them from constantly having to fight exclusion on their own.
