Almost exactly three months to the day after she typed the tweet into her cell phone, on a Thursday in August, Anni W., the woman whose name even the chancellor has heard before, still has 60 euros in her account.
It must be enough.
For 14 days during which she and her son have to eat, dress, move and pay bills.
She stands in her kitchen and roasts 400 grams of expired chicken, "internal fillets cut from the breast."
Best before: 02/01/22.
That's what it says on the pack.
Next to it is a large neon sticker: »–30%«.
In the "Tagesschau" at noon, the spokesman announced that inflation in the euro area was at a record high, at 8.9 percent in July, and would continue to rise, especially in Germany, into the double-digit range.
Anni W. pushes the thawed meat back and forth in the pan and says she only buys meat just before the expiration date and then freezes it.
"I can't afford it any other way."
Anni W. lives in North Rhine-Westphalia, in Voerde, a small town on the Lower Rhine, in what she calls a “mouldy flat”.
Three rooms on 67 square meters.
On the ceiling, above her son Benjamin*'s bed, a wet stain is spreading like watercolor paint on a piece of paper.
Her twelve-year-old daughter has been living with her father for six months.
"All You Need Is Love" is written on a screen above the kitchen door;
it sounds like a defiant claim.
She canceled a first meeting.
She texted, "It's all too straight for me."
When you sit in her living room a few weeks later, you can sense that there is great determination.
At the same time exhaustion.
Sometimes she speaks loudly and firmly, then she goes out onto the balcony again and needs a break.
Since the hashtag thing, hardly a day has gone by that Anni W. hasn't publicly addressed her poverty.
She tweets about it every day, she sits in talks with experts, stands at demonstrations, and with her hashtag #IchBinArmutbeschlag from her sofa in North Rhine-Westphalia, she unexpectedly becomes the founder of a movement of people who can hardly afford to live in Germany anymore.
And there are many: According to a report by the Parity Welfare Association, 13.8 million people in this country are at risk of poverty, every fifth child.
While the Federal Minister of Finance is talking about a "free mentality", the unemployed, low earners, students and pensioners write under Anni W's hashtag about what it's like when you no longer know how to fill your fridge.
How are they doing in the inflationary summer of 2022?
In the distance, behind her street, you can see the city's old coal-fired power plant, a cooling tower, three chimneys, long shut down, like Anni W's working life.
Not because she wants it that way.
Anni W. says she would like to work again, for example at the post office.
But Anni W. is ill, she suffers from arthrosis in the lumbar spine and has been suffering from depression for many years.
There are days, she says, when she can't do anything, not even go shopping or cook.
Then it is only enough for canned goods or frozen pizzas.
"Go for a walk and get some fresh air," a clerk at the job center told her, "then it'll be fine." But it wasn't.
And now here she is in her kitchen, rising inflation pushing her to the edge with every percent.
"It does something to you," says Anni W., "this constant lack, this awareness that it won't be enough - that makes you sick."
A few days ago her ten-year-old son started fifth grade, a suave boy with slanting bangs on his forehead.
When her daughter started secondary school two years ago, she was able to make a bag for her with a few school supplies and sweets.
"That was no longer possible for Benjamin."
She says: "It's no use if the politicians keep telling you to limit yourself.
I can't limit myself anymore – because everything is so on edge.” She pauses.
"No," she says then, "it's long since under the edge."
The anger came in May, says Anni W. Butter suddenly cost 43 percent more than a year ago, poultry 23.8 percent, diesel 52 percent.
In April, Anni W's time at the Tafel was over: so that each of the many needy people can get their turn, the Tafel in Voerde works with a changing model.
It was Anni W.'s turn until April, for six months, during which she was able to stand in line at a site trailer once a week for fruit and vegetables.
That was now gone.
And then she read this article in a magazine that reported on Hartz IV recipients, and the tenor was: If you can't live on Hartz IV, you can't handle money.
"I was so angry," she says.
»We are not hammock loungers.
It is not our fault that we are in poverty.
A lot of us are sick.” She says “poverty,” not poor because it sounds more dignified.
"I'm not socially weak either," she says, "just financially."
In the kitchen cupboard is Anni W's Alg-II decision in cling film, "Approval of benefits to secure subsistence" is on it, four pages on recycled paper.
Benjamin's father's child support and maintenance are taken into account, so the two don't have any more money.
After deducting all fixed costs, 480 euros remain for living.
There is a pie chart that divides the life of Hartz IV recipients like Anni W. into colorful triangular pieces, i.e. into what a single person is entitled to according to the state.
37.26 euros for clothing and shoes;
17.14 euros for health care;
155.82 euros for food, beverages, tobacco.
That's 5.19 euros per day and person – for breakfast, lunch, dinner and drinks.
How is that supposed to work when the butter costs almost three euros?
It sounds like a utopia.
Anni W. tells how she sat on her sofa that morning in May and typed a long thread on her Twitter profile.
She wrote, "I'm NOT anti-social, lazy, stupid, or can't handle money... I'm human.
No number, no cliché.«
She later added a photo of herself, a woman with glasses and a cautious smile, along with an appeal: "#I'mpovertyaffected.
I would be happy if you participate.
Let's show who we are.«
In the evening at Maybrit Illner, Christian Lindner discussed the topic "War, Corona, Inflation - one crisis too many?", and at Anni W. in Voerde, notifications rushed in without end.
First there were dozens, then hundreds, soon there were several thousand who followed her call.
A pensioner wrote that she was in pain pushing her walker to the blackboard, two kilometers, every Thursday, after 32 years of work.
A woman without a thyroid wrote that she could no longer buy pills that would help her.
A Hartz IV recipient wrote that he had been walking around with an expired identity card for a year and a half because he couldn't afford the 37 euro fee.
Why didn't these people get loud much earlier?
And how social is the welfare state really?
»One Less Worry«, an initiative that offers unbureaucratic help for the poor, pushed the hashtag further.
Shortly thereafter, #IBinArmutsaffected landed in the German Bundestag.
Janine Wissler, chairwoman of the Left Party, who finds Anni W. "unfortunately unelectable," stood behind the podium and read some of the tweets.
A little later, Anni W. was interviewed for a small film that was shown by Olaf Scholz in the summer interview - alongside a pensioner from Thuringia and a skilled worker from Berlin.
"Dear Mr. Scholz," she said into the camera, "I expect you and the federal government to finally see the 13.8 million poor people in Germany."
It was a big moment.
She was never a political person, says Anni W. To this day, she has not found the right party for herself.
And suddenly she's on television and the Chancellor is listening to her.
It's been two months now.
And the anger?
It's still there, says Anni W.
In the meantime, she has received “relief money”: a one-time payment of 200 euros plus a 100-euro child bonus.
"Gone," says Anni W., like drizzle falling on dry ground.
"I didn't have anything in mid-July," she says.
"Pasta, happened tomatoes, that's it." She then bought supplies with the relief money, offers that should save her over the next few weeks.
They sit in the kitchen pantry like canned life insurance: chili beans, finely chopped tomatoes, Uncle Ben's sauce on sale.
With the rest, she gave her son a few days of summer vacation.
They went to the outdoor pool a couple of times, once they went to the North Sea, says Anni W., and she also bought Benjamin a second glass of Sprite in the café.
A typical day for Anni W. begins with the thought of her poverty.
It's Friday, the alarm clock goes off at 6:45 am.
And the consciousness is back: It won't be enough, she says.
First thing in the morning is her son's question: "Can I buy a cup of cocoa at school?"
In his new school there is a kiosk that the children like to go to.
"Benjamin is actually a frugal child," she says, "but I want my children to be able to keep up." So she slips him a euro, which she misses elsewhere.
Benjamin is looking for his t-shirt with the cats on it.
Almost everything he wears is a donation or bought used, at flea markets or via eBay classifieds.
Anni W. calls him »my darling«, »son«.
She stands in the kitchen, spreads cheese on wholemeal toast and says: "Come on, sit down, eat something, I'll go wash the dishes."
Recently, Benjamin also received a pair of Puma sneakers through a donation.
"Mama," he said, "no one wore that before me.
They're new.” It was his first pair of unworn shoes.
"For a long time I was able to hide from my children that we were poor," says Anni W., "but not anymore." Her children's friends have money.
"They see a life there that I cannot offer them."
"Benjamin, that's not possible now", "Benjamin, that's not possible" - she has had to say these sentences more often lately.
Benjamin took his first vacation last year.
"Not with me.
But with his best friend's family,« says Anni W. His parents invited him and took him to the Netherlands, to a facility with an amusement park.
At her daughter's school there was always a book after the holidays in which the children were supposed to write down what they had experienced.
Her daughter wrote down "Spain."
"She was ashamed," says Anni W. The child was at home the entire vacation.
She still has returnable bottles that she wants to bring to the discounter – that's her nest egg, she says.
She puts the empty bottles in shopping bags, pushes Benjamin out of the apartment with his satchel, and pulls the door shut behind her.
Anni W. was not always unemployed, nor did she grow up in poverty.
On her dresser in the living room is a framed photo from her childhood.
She can be seen on it with her father, mother and older sister, all with 1980s hairstyles.
She grew up in Kaiserslautern, in what she says was a “normal middle-class household”.
Her father worked in electroplating at the sewing machine manufacturer Pfaff for decades.
Her mother worked as a geriatric nurse until she recently retired.
Poverty was never an issue: "If there was something that didn't exist in my childhood, it was only because my parents were convinced and never because of the money." This is also how she explains why she never worried about the future.
That instead of graduating from high school, she only left school with a technical college entrance qualification in order to take a full-time job in the arcade where she had previously worked on a 450-euro basis.
It was fun for her, she says, changing money, serving coffee, cleaning.
She made good money, bought whatever she wanted, Miss Sixty jeans, take-aways.
She actually wanted to study, she says, German studies to become a teacher or psychology.
She always thought: "I'm young, I'll do it later."
But later the man came, the children came, "and then it was over," says Anni W. She relied on the old model, man goes to work, woman takes care of it.
But the man changed from job to job, earned too little.
Already with Benjamin in her stomach, she says, she stood at the table.
Once in line, someone punched her in the stomach.
After the separation, when health would still have worked, she must have written more than 300 applications.
She hardly got any answers.
And when offers came, it was only for jobs in shift work.
How is that supposed to work, alone with two small children?
Being a single parent is a risk of poverty even if you are not ill.
Every third household of single mothers or fathers in Germany is dependent on Hartz IV.
The job center sent her to care, but that didn't work, so she began retraining as a carpenter, "such a nice job," she says.
Then her back went on strike.
Many of those who write to #I am poor are chronically ill.
“If you find yourself in this situation, you blame yourself.
Then you think you don't deserve anything else.« Saying goodbye to this thought is difficult.
To this day, she hasn't quite made it.
You know all the clichés about Hartz IV recipients, all the RTL-2 pictures where people in undershirts are presented sitting on the sofa, canned beer for breakfast.
»This eternal ›They are too lazy to work‹«.
The disparaging looks, the arrogance at the job center, at school.
You can guess how much this view from the outside shapes her: she seems wary of confirming even a single cliché.
She likes to be photographed with her books.
Because she has stocked up with the relief money, she's worried that someone might say: she can't be poor.
"It's neither dirty nor filthy here," she says.
She has hung photos of children on the walls, pictures she has painted herself, hides damaged furniture under decorations, places doilies over stains and lights scented candles.
"People are ashamed of their poverty." And that's something that particularly touches them about the whole hashtag thing.
That suddenly people show up who had been hiding for years.
Anni W. drops Benjamin off at the new school and continues to the discount store.
She drives an old Ford Fiesta, without which, because of her back pain, she couldn't cope with her everyday life, she says.
She pulls the returnable bottles out of the trunk.
At the deposit machine, there is this orange donation button »Support the table« on the display.
Once, she says, Benjamin accidentally pressed it and the money was gone.
"If I hear Scholz say again: 'But we helped', then I jump into the television," says Anni W. "Does this person really believe that a one-time payment of 200 euros is enough?
Doesn't the man go shopping?
Isn't he eating?” she asks.
Anni W. pushes the shopping cart through the automatic door of the discount store.
She roams around the freezers.
She says, "I'll see what I would buy." "Would," she often says now, because most things are too expensive.
“If ground beef was reduced – I would like to take it with me.” She pulls it out of the chest: 4.35 euros for 500 grams. Not long ago it was 2.99 euros, and even that was too much for her .
Anni W. has developed a strategy for purchasing.
She pulls the packs of meat from the depths of the chest, looks at the expiration date, makes a mental note of it, and puts it back in the bottom.
A day before the meat is no longer good, Anni W. comes back to the supermarket and hopes.
That the glowing round sticker is on the pack.
She does the same with mozzarella.
She knows the before and after prices by heart, down to the cent.
The salami used to cost 1.09 euros.
Now it costs 1.49 euros.
Before, that was before Corona disrupted supply chains, Russia attacked Ukraine and energy prices skyrocketed.
Afterwards, that's the time when she can no longer pay even the reduced prices.
She no longer buys butter, only margarine.
She puts the goods on the checkout belt: grapes for Benjamin, bread that says "Save me - short shelf life", sausages that are about to expire and the only luxury she allows herself: a can of Spezi for 89 cents.
The deposit money is not enough.
You pay 8.26 euros on it.
That leaves her with not quite 52 euros for the rest of the month.
If you ask her what she's asking for, she doesn't think twice and says: »200 euros more per month«.
That is the recommendation of the Parity Welfare Association, and the movement adheres to it.
Whether they are Hartz IV recipients, pensioners, students, asylum seekers - "we people affected by poverty simply want more money".
Then she says: "I want this pseudo-welfare state to become a welfare state again."
According to Articles 20 and 28 of the Basic Law, it is the duty of the state to take care of social justice and the social security of its citizens.
But that is currently threatened for many people in this country.
Politicians fear unrest, a "hot autumn" followed by a furious winter.
The supporters of the poverty movement are already considering how they can protect themselves against infiltration from the right.
Anni W. and her fellow campaigners experience a government that promises relief after relief.
However, it is often not just those who need it most who benefit from this.
High earners also traveled with the 9-euro ticket.
Porsche drivers also enjoyed the tank discount.
Only employed people get the energy price flat rate, even those who have neither gas heating nor a car, while some pensioners and students are queuing at the table.
"None of this is fair," says Anni W.
Energy prices rose by around 35 percent in August compared to the same month last year.
Hartz IV recipients have to pay electricity costs themselves, and the job center only pays for heating that is considered »appropriate«.
But what is appropriate when the apartment is poorly insulated and the fridge is from the 1990s?
Groceries cost 16.6 percent more in August than a year ago.
After the end of the fuel discount and 9-euro ticket, a new price increase is predicted.
One expert spoke of a "social tsunami" that would soon reach Germany.
Anni W. says: »I want something to change.
And now.” It's about justice.
For dignity.
At this moment she no longer just sounds like Anni W. from Voerde, who loves doctor series and fantasy novels.
She sounds like an advocate for the poor.
A Saturday afternoon at the end of August, 380 kilometers from Voerde, roughly at the point where the parked cars are thickest and the facades of the villas are snow-white, not far from the sailing club, four people with cardboard signs climb into the murky water of Hamburg's Alster.
They wade over rocks, some barefoot, some with shoes, until the water reaches their waists, then their chests.
They hold up their shields.
It says in handwritten letters: »We are going under« and »Excess profit tax now«.
People who don't want to hide anymore, someone keeps holding up Anni W.'s hashtag from Voerde: #I'm poor.
In Cologne and Berlin there are also people holding up such signs on this day.
Every two weeks, always on Saturdays, they take the protest to the streets from Twitter.
Anni W. has often been present at these demonstrations.
On this day @klein_nini is standing in the water of the Alster in Hamburg, a single mother with her daughter, a blonde girl, who is holding a sign in front of her face that says: »We are in water up to our necks«.
The mother lives on a disability pension, increased to 449 euros per month.
She says she was able to buy her child an ice cream twice this summer.
Account balance: 40 euros in the red.
Next to her is @non_conform23, who loves music and has a daughter he would like to give as a present.
Until he recently received a donation of clothes, he didn't have a single intact T-shirt in his closet, he says.
To get full, he mainly eats pasta.
And then there's @femmewiken, also a single mum using her phone to make a film of the action for TikTok.
She is a caregiver in a nursing home.
She had to quit her old job in a flat share with dementia in June, she says, because she could no longer afford the daily trip there when the price of petrol rose to more than two euros a liter.
Now she has a new job at a nursing home nearby, but it's still not enough.
Only thanks to the 9-euro ticket could her son have something like vacation, she says.
"I'm an FDP voter," a passerby calls out to them as they stand dripping with their signs back on the bank to take another group photo.
"My condolences," @klein_nini calls after him.
She has noticed a change in herself so far, the single parent later says: "I'm not as ashamed anymore," she says.
You have invested a lot of energy not to appear poor, not to attract attention.
"To pass as a normal citizen."
But that's not what she is.
It sounds like a liberation.
After the action, they walk along the Alster promenade, the signs under their arms, past the white villas.
You would like to have another cup of coffee.
But in the café they stand undecidedly at the side.
"Are you in line?" someone asks.
They shake their heads and leave.
Three euros for a cappuccino.
You can't pay for it.
Last Sunday, two days after Anni W's 40th birthday, Olaf Scholz announced the new relief package.
The standard rate for Anni W. and her allies should rise to 500 euros per month from January.
With luck, a compensation for inflation.
But January is still a long way off.
Autumn comes before January, then winter.
That same afternoon, shortly after the government advertised its 65 billion euro package and Scholz said: "We will get through this winter," Anni W. wrote on Twitter: The 51 euros from 2023 are a slap in the face.
She wrote: 'We need help NOW!
Instantly!
... We're standing at the tills and don't know what to do!«
*Name has been changed