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Roman Seifert (2nd from left) with neighbors on the construction site of his future garden
Photo: Maria Feck / DER SPIEGEL
When Roman Seifert takes away the rubbish in the morning, he knows straight away how well his dreams match reality.
Under the large lids he can see what separates his neighbors and himself.
Namely what they have consumed and thrown away: canned food, plastic packaging for cheap meat, banana peels.
Seifert, 37 years old, editor of a magazine for cemetery culture and recently a father, wanted it that way. The differences, he says, stimulated him. He intended not to tell anyone how he or she should live. But if it were up to him, the focus of the village would be even more on regional nutrition and its own consumer behavior. »SoLaWi« is one of his favorite words. It stands for solidarity agriculture. Seifert himself is currently in the process of setting up a farm for high-quality edible mushrooms.
What nutrition is for the ambitious mushroom grower, his neighbor lives with refugees, another says that he just wants to build something up again in retirement - they all have in common that they live in a settlement where all of this should be possible.
The project is called Hitzacker Dorf, and it aims to solve several contemporary problems at once.
It is an attempt to build a village that grows instead of shrinking.
In which the coexistence of different people works: old and young, migrant and German.
And that offers affordable living space through a cooperative - which in turn should be ecologically and climate-friendly.
With the help of those who later live there themselves.
It sounds like it can't possibly be anything.
Six years
after the first idea, however, the village is reality.
Today there are 14 houses on a hill on the edge of Hitzacker, a long Elbe village in Wendland, one and a half hours southeast of Hamburg.
Even if it still looks like a construction site on site, 70 people are already living there, around 50 adults and 20 children and adolescents.
What is it like to live in a utopia that suddenly becomes reality?
Where diversity is a basic requirement, but should only be eaten organic, please.
Where different living environments are expressly desired, even if that means controversy when it comes to vaccination.
On a December lunchtime, Naram Alomar, 29, is standing in the communal kitchen ladling red cabbage with potatoes and vegan walnut sauce on deep plates.
In front of her, mostly gray-haired neighbors wait patiently for their portion.
Nobody has to eat here, all apartments have kitchens.
But for many, eating is a ritual that reflects the basic idea of the village project: It's more beautiful together.
Alomar came to Germany from Syria with her family in 2014.
But when she arrived correctly, she says, she's only here.
Before that, she lived in the neighboring town and, as she says, suffered for years in silence, traumatized and alone.
She had once studied law in Aleppo.
Now she was sitting in the provinces, taking care of her three small children and in her late twenties already felt like she was at the end of her life.
Until she found out about the project by chance.
The Alomars are one of two families who have fled to date, and there is also an international flat share.
Originally, a third of the village was to be inhabited by people with a migration background.
Today we are still a long way from that.
When it started, there were definitely interested parties.
But for many refugees it took too long until the first houses were finally up.
Others preferred to visit relatives in the city.
Again and again you have
have to explain the idea, recalls Roman Seifert.
»You live in Europe«, a man from Afghanistan once asked, aghast, during a tour.
"Why do you voluntarily build with clay?"
"It wasn't as easy as we had imagined," Seifert openly admits.
Naram Alomar also remembers reservations.
"Do you really want to live on a construction site after you've escaped halfway around the world?" Her mother asked her.
Naram Alomar wanted.
For her, she says today, it is exactly the right environment.
Perhaps because it is easier to find your own place in a place that is not yet finished itself.
She too can contribute something here, says Alomar.
On the construction site, which is slowly becoming a village, she is needed somewhere every day.
For their children, on the other hand, there are enough open-minded neighbors to belong and
Growing up happy in a sheltered environment.
Conversely, the comrades also had to learn.
When Alomar cooked for the construction site for the first time, she casually said that she had bought from Aldi and of course also eat meat.
For the mostly vegetarian, vegan or at least organic villagers that caused unease and fundamental discussions, she recalls.
The otherwise valued openness, it suddenly got clear limits.
Behind this, questions emerged that haunt the village to this day:
How much adaptation can a group that wants to be diverse ask for?
How many compromises does it take to be able to live together?
Today, says Alomar, she still cooks the way she sees fit.
But now she and the neighbors also have an organic box from the nearby farm.
Hauke Stichling-Pehlke is one of the founding fathers of the village project.
He is very familiar with housing projects, including any tensions.
The 56-year-old has lived in Wendland for 30 years, now in the historic center of Hitzacker.
The protests against the Castor transports, the anti-nuclear movement, the dropouts - he witnessed all of this.
Also that many old companions said goodbye over time, and that the togetherness became increasingly fragile.
When hundreds of thousands of people came to Europe in 2015 and many Germans discovered their willingness to help, they scooped
he and an acquaintance new hope.
"We thought: If a million people come to Germany, there will surely be a hundred who want to build something with us in Wendland."
The idea turned into talks, a loose circle, and finally a cooperative.
They brought in an architect friend and thought about how to build cheaply and ecologically.
Soon the cooperative had more than a hundred members.
It is not that the Stichling-Pehlke is not familiar with the implementation of utopias.
As a project developer, he set up one of the first intercultural senior citizens' centers in Hamburg.
In Hitzacker, he and others turned the train station into a cultural center.
What Stichling-Pehlke had never done, however, was to build with people who did not know each other and to build an entire village together.
In the first two years alone, the members of the cooperative sunk 250,000 euros for changes and special requests from the architect.
Here a larger bathroom, there fewer partitions.
Those who paid more money into the community fund also wanted to plan more individually.
Even with the diversity of the group, there were quick deviations from the ideal.
Significantly more old people than young people or refugees wanted to take part.
At the same time, the work became more and more overwhelming for those involved with each passing month.
Finally, a neighborhood dispute halted the construction site for a year and a half.
The group paused - and agreed to do without any extra requests from now on.
All apartments belong to the community.
So nobody should be able to build just for themselves.
The price of democratic coexistence today is that there is a working group for practically everything.
There are currently 25.
Not only for finances and intercultural coexistence, but also garden design, water consumption and wall painting.
A delegate system has been in place for two years, which is intended to ensure more binding force.
Conversely, this also means that not everyone can have a say in everything.
Looking back, says Hauke Stichling-Pehlke, he was often too impatient.
At some point the comrades began to tell him that too.
He drew the consequences.
He has not been a member of the board since last year.
Today, life in the village is mainly organized by those who also live there.
A turning point.
Perhaps the step was also the necessary proof that the Hitzacker Dorf project is actually a democratic project.
Lara Scheffold, 19, also knows the need for demarcation.
In a sense, she grew up on the village construction site.
But it wasn't her choice.
Rather, her single parent decided
Mother to join the project.
The Scheffolds were the first inhabitants of the village.
When they came to Hitzacker, their house was only in the shell.
They lived in the construction trailer for five months, washing themselves outdoors with tin bowls.
Again and again the young person Lara irritated how many people suddenly knew her name.
She, in turn, saw mostly gray hair and a large construction site.
So that the family could move in, others paid for their 41,000 euros in the cooperative.
That, too, was a realization of the first few years: For a real togetherness it is not enough just to be open and curious.
Anyone who wants to live with refugees and large families in the province must actively help them to get there.
A new rental system will therefore be in place from next year: No longer a flat rate of 6.50 euros per square meter, but adapted to needs - borne by those who have more.
Lara now says she enjoys the advantages of village life.
You now appreciate the togetherness.
The cordiality.
The feeling of having someone to listen at all times.
When her little sister once announced a circus, 20 neighbors were waiting curiously in front of the living room window that evening.
Due to the pandemic, such meetings are currently hardly possible.
This is a problem for the village - now of all times, when everything is slowly being finished, the loose togetherness has been given strict rules.
In contrast to food, diversity in dealing with the virus is not an asset, but a danger.
Anyone visiting the estate today will receive a reminder from Roman Seifert the day before to have a test again.
The young father takes the virus seriously.
But not everyone sees it like him.
Many, who are more skeptical, say that they do not want to cause problems, but that they doubted the point of vaccination.
You ask about side effects, the social effects of the corona policy.
There is also a separate working group for the virus.
Critical texts are sent back and forth, there is a dispute.
Here, too, the village tries to mediate between the camps.
Measured against your own requirements, the project is only just beginning.
Although the cooperative has achieved remarkable things in a few years, it doesn't feel that way for many of those involved.
The village founders are tired.
Many put their own lives on the back burner for a long time;
Relationships, friendships and careers are subordinate to building a lifelong dream.
Now they realize that if you keep doing this, there will probably always be something new to do.
There is a field right next to the village.
Twice as large as the area previously used.
More could arise here in the minds of the comrades.
New living space, some business.
There is a doctor's office and an improvised co-working space.
Many residents could
but start more with a bakery.
The construction of the first 14 houses has attracted new interested parties.
There is now a waiting list.
"Many who are coming now mainly see what has been achieved and just want to move in," says Roman Seifert.
“But we're looking for people who think bigger.
Who carry on what we started.
We need people for the field, not for the living room. "
Perhaps, first of all, you need a distance to see what has been achieved better.
If you call the mayor of Hitzacker, you only hear good things.
"As a liberal, I am in favor of initiative and I know what it means to belong to a minority," says Holger Mertins of the FDP and laughs.
Of course, he was also suspicious at first, says Mertins.
An ecological building project by foreigners and refugees, well, that has already caused fears in the town.
Six years later, however, he had to acknowledge what had been achieved.
In any case, the broad interest did not harm Hitzacker.
The place is now officially growing again.
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