After a 20 percent rent increase from Munich: Leipziger denounces “power imbalance” in an angry tweet

Created: 01/16/2022, 18:58

By: Klaus-Maria Mehr

Carsten G. tweets his rent increase in Leipzig.

His landlord is from Munich.

© Twitter/dpa

At the turn of the year, Carsten G. is again informed that he is an East German.

The friendly reminder comes by mail from Munich.

About a power imbalance that continues into the next generation.

Munich – The housing shortage and rents in Munich are legendary far beyond the state capital.

What is less known: property owners from Munich are also driving rents in other major German cities, especially in eastern Germany.

Leipzig, for example, no longer belongs to the people of Leipzig, but mainly to private investors from West Germany.

(payment barrier) , 86 percent of Leipzig tenants transfer

their monthly rent to the West.

Many payments should also go to Munich and Upper Bavaria.

Leipziger makes 20 percent rent increase from Munich public via Twitter

A 42-year-old from Leipzig, whom we call Carsten G. for the sake of simplicity, so that he and his family don't get into trouble from his Munich landlord, spoke up on Twitter after a rent increase of almost 20 percent and thus over 3500 likes and 435 provoked retweets.

First of all: According to the rental agreement, Carsten G. pays a so-called index rent.

The rental price is linked to the consumer price index.

If this increases due to high inflation rates, the landlord can also increase the rent significantly.

In theory, the index rent is intended to ensure for both landlords and tenants that, adjusted for inflation, the same value is always paid and received for the apartment.

Because if the consumer price index falls, the tenant could also demand a rent reduction.

At least in theory.

In practice, the index hardly ever falls. 

Rent increase from Munich in Leipzig by 20 percent is legal - but that's not the point

Due to the high inflation rate in 2021, Carsten G's rent increase is completely legal.

Apparently, many, especially West German, Twitter users explained this to him in detail.

But that wasn't what G. was about when he tweeted: "Why do we East Germans still distinguish between East and West?

Because of the power imbalance: I live in Leipzig, my Munich landlord welcomes me in 2022 with a rent increase of almost 20%.

Carsten G. vents his anger on Twitter.

He is less concerned with the rent increase than with the power imbalance between Munich and Leipzig.

© Screenshot Twitter

He was concerned with the power imbalance that perfidiously continued in his generation, even though the 42-year-old spent most of his life in reunified Germany.

Unequal ownership: Power imbalances between East and West continue through inheritance

Because Carsten G's contemporaries in the West belong to the heirs' generation.

The German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) assumes that goods and cash worth 300 to 400 billion euros are currently inherited or passed on to younger generations in the form of gifts.

Among them will probably be some apartments in Leipzig.

G. gets nothing from his parents.

“My parents are both academics.

Nevertheless, they were unemployed after reunification.” Before that, in the GDR, it was not even possible to build up your own property.

"If I had grown up in the West, I would have a condo today."

The wealth inherited not only widens the gap between rich and poor across Germany, it also passes the wall between East and West on to a generation that has never lived with it. 

For most of his life, Carsten G. did not feel like an East German.

Only when he moved west and lived in Hamburg and Munich.

"Are you from East Germany?

You can't even hear it," was one of those classics.

Now, at home in Leipzig at the turn of the year, a man from Munich reminds him again that G. is East German and what that means.

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