Sylt: Regulatory office harassed punks – "they really terrorize us"

Created: 07/24/2022, 10:10 am

By: Kevin Goonewardena

The punks on Sylt are still there.

Now they are checked several times a day.

It is unclear what that will bring.

Of course, it causes trouble.

Westerland / Sylt – The first weekend of validity for the 9-euro ticket is long gone, and Pentecost 2022 is also behind Sylt.

Demonstrations and the wedding of Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner and Franca Lehnfeldt are a thing of the past.

Walls were built, wells blocked, fences put up and everything reversed.

There is still a group that most would probably not even have dreamed of associating with the celebrity island of Sylt a few months ago, and which is now mentioned in the same breath as the island of the rich and beautiful - a fact that will remain for a while .

Of course we are talking about the punks of Westerland, who came to the island on the first weekend in June thanks to the 9-euro ticket and have been enjoying the beauty of the North Sea island in their own way for seven weeks now, sometimes with more or less media support .

But the presence of the studded leather jacket wearers like the Sylt authorities less and less.

So what to do?

Punks on Sylt: Here to stay - bawling, peeing wildly and drinking included

It's a bit like party guests who invite themselves in and are allowed to - hoping that after having a bit of fun they'll leave of their own accord - only to find that hope won't come true.

Unfortunately, these uninvited party guests also do not offer any reason for being thrown out.

You still want to get rid of them.

You just don't like them.

So what to do if, like now in Sylt, no stones are thrown at all, no shop windows are broken, no one is looted or burned?

Sylt: Due to the punks in Westerland, there is also a security service on the island.

Then there is the public order office and the police.

© Dagmar Schlenz/Paul Zinken/dpa

Apparently there is no woman whose Chanel bag has been stolen, no Porsche whose tires have been punctured.

A bit of wild urination and bawling is not enough for a city or island ban.

Millions of Cologne carnivalists and sunburned Adilette wearers on Malle know this only too well from their own experience.

And besieging a Rossmann branch is not a punishable act.

Sylt and the punks on the island: do you have a spa tax?

- The public order office arrives several times a day

The Sylt policy discovered a means that in one or the other the train of thought "typically German!" should evoke: The municipality sends the regulatory office and employees of other institutions to intensify controls.

Among other things, compliance with the spa tax is checked, as the mayor of the municipality of Sylt, Nikolas Häckel, confirmed to the Hamburger Abendblatt.

"The public order office is present several times a day at the neuralgic points, the security service from 1 p.m. to 1 a.m. with two teams in the city center," says Häckel.

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Westerland punks

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The punks, for their part, speak of an average of five checks a day, during which personal details are also taken and private bags are searched.

The mayor of Sylt strongly disagrees with the latter.

Häckel goes on to explain in the Abendblatt that the patrols are “particularly about compliance with the statutes and the obligation to pay resort taxes.” This is also confirmed by “Fuxxx”, one of the punks, to the Abendblatt.

"This morning, around 7 a.m., the public order office came again"

The punk Fuxxx opposite the evening newspaper

Cure tax Sylt: day guests have to take care of themselves - controls at punks coincidence?

While hoteliers and landlords of guest rooms, holiday apartments and other accommodation collect the spa tax via the price and hand out the spa card to the guests, day trippers have to pay the tax themselves.

It remains speculative whether the Sylter security services also check people who cannot be assigned to the punk spectrum with the same frequency of payment of the spa tax or other things, or whether they deliberately head for the same with wise anticipation of the result of a punk check.

We're not even allowed to go to the beach here just because we don't have any money.

I feel like I'm in some medieval town where you have to pay some sort of toll to enter.

Punk Fuxxx opposite the Abendblatt

On the other hand, it is known that general controls do not affect all members of society equally and that controls serve both to demonstrate power relations and, if used repeatedly, can be part of a strategy of attrition.

In individual cases, any other action has been prohibited by the court.

A non-random selection of the person to be checked is regularly disputed by the authorities.

Punks on Sylt: Even this one love will come to an end

On August 27, 2022, the summer holidays will also end for schoolchildren in Germany's last federal state.

The 9-euro ticket expires on August 30, 2022, and an extension or alternatives are currently being discussed.

Just under a week later, on September 5, 2022, the first week of sessions in the German Bundestag will begin after the two-month parliamentary summer break.

At the latest then the topics will be different again.

The punks on Sylt are coming back - in the big annual reviews with Oliver Geißen, Markus Lanz, Günther Jauch and Co. That much is certain.