As of: February 22, 2024, 1:56 p.m
Comments
Press
Split
In the face of massive headwinds, District Administrator Olaf von Löwis in Warngau defends compliance with laws and the construction of the planned refugee accommodation on the Vivo site.
© Helmut Hacker
Angry citizens, investigations and 500 refugees: The construction of accommodation for refugees threatens to tear the small community of Warngau apart.
The Miesbach district administrator was chased from a meeting under police protection.
Warngau – Nobody is happy about the planned refugee home in Warngau.
Not the district administrator, not the mayor, not even the open-minded village doctor - and certainly not the Gschwendtner farming family.
She lives outside Warngau (Miesbach district) in the small hamlet of Draxlham, one kilometer away from the planned accommodation.
The farmers tried vehemently to prevent it: conversations, posters, a petition.
But the container village for 500 people is coming.
“I won’t forgive them for that,” says Monika Gschwendtner.
Asylum dispute in Warngau: District office looked for a solution for gymnasium accommodation
To understand what is happening in the community of 4,000, you have to look back.
The district has been looking for a solution for the three gymnasiums in Miesbach and Tegernsee for a year and a half: around 600 refugees are accommodated there, over 80 percent are men.
And 50 people come every week.
According to a spokeswoman for the district office, there are no fundamental problems with refugees in either Miesbach or Tegernsee.
“Of course, when hundreds of people, regardless of their nationality, live together in a small space, there is always friction, but this is more related to the cramped living together in the hall.”
“We didn’t know what to do anymore.
I have sent countless letters to the district government, to the Interior Minister and to Berlin: We need a break,” says District Administrator Olaf von Löwis (CSU).
There are no accommodations.
The district also does not have any large properties such as empty barracks.
Discussions were held with mayors and offers from private individuals were examined, but in most cases the properties were unsuitable.
The district administrator says that people from the gyms cannot be accommodated in small units.
There is a lack of space for decentralized accommodation.
The gymnasiums are divided into small compartments with bunk beds.
There are no walls, just visual separations.
Löwis finds this inhumane: “People have been cooped up here for two years.
And school and club sports can no longer take place there.
The clubs have been standing on the mat for a year and are rightly demanding that the gyms be opened.”
New accommodation planned next to recycling warehouse: “Maybe we should have gotten people on board earlier”
To solve the problem, a task force examined all possible locations in October.
One area caught our eye: the meadow next to the municipal waste disposal company Vivo in Warngau - which belongs to the district.
Von Löwis says they thought about it for a long time.
The location is not ideal because Warngau is far away.
The next largest town is Holzkirchen, around two kilometers away.
“But we have no other choice.
It is the only option available.”
A fenced-in facility with four container buildings for up to 126 people each is planned.
There is also a building with a kindergarten, kitchen and washing machines, a house for social workers and a small supermarket.
The district calls it a “village within a village”.
The people will live here for two years and then move to decentralized accommodation.
At the beginning of December, the plans leaked from the district council environment.
Mayor Klaus Thurnhuber (Free Voters' Association) knew about this earlier, but did not make it public because, as he says, there were no clear commitments at the time.
“Perhaps we should have gotten people on board earlier.” In mid-January, Thurnhuber and the local council voted against the accommodation.
My news
After the heaviest losses: Ukrainian elite command receives “combat boats” with 1,300 hp
1 hour ago
Russia escalates tensions on the border with Finland and sends thousands of refugees
Protection from Putin: Skyranger instead of Cheetah - Bundeswehr gets new anti-aircraft tanks
Read why Putin is planning massive attacks in the next three weeks of all times
22 mins ago
“Everything is simply wrong”: On ZDF, Hofreiter dismantles Scholz’s arguments for Taurus hesitation reading
Cities fall, tanks burn - Putin's war continues south
Monika Gschwendtner found out about the plans at the Christmas market.
Completely dismayed, she called “Klaus,” her mayor.
He told her that his hands were tied.
“The bad thing is that we were not informed in advance.
We will become the reception center for the entire district,” she says.
“The location is inhumane, right next to the commercial area and the waste disposal facility.
The noise starts there at six in the morning.
And it stinks from organic recycling.” She speaks openly about her fears.
The refugees “have nothing to do all day,” she says.
“My dirndl often travels here on horseback.
I already told her: You’re not here anymore!”
Also because of AfD infiltration: District administrator has to leave the meeting under police protection
The Gschwendtners and others started an online petition and collected around 3,800 signatures, including from Rosenheim and Munich.
And they have put up controversial posters showing an overcrowded refugee boat breaking through the Warngau town sign.
They don't believe that this will heat up the mood.
“They haven’t been able to get their politics under control for ten years,” complains Klaus Gschwendtner.
This is the big politics in Munich, Berlin and Brussels.
But they have also lost trust in local politicians.
They assume that the accommodation will remain long-term.
“I always gave them my vote.
But I don’t choose them anymore,” says the farmer’s wife.
The fears should actually have been dispelled at the citizens' meeting at the beginning of February.
But the district administrator's attempts at an explanation came to nothing, around 500 opponents sang in front of the tavern into previously distributed whistles and the AfD led by Rosenheim state parliament member Andreas Winhart infiltrated the discussion with perfidious contributions.
In the end, the meeting got completely out of hand, as inquiries to the police and district office revealed.
District Administrator von Löwis had to be taken out of the inn under police protection - through the back exit of the toilet.
“I called my driver in the backyard, but he couldn’t get through because of the demonstrators.
So I got into the police car.
People noticed this and rushed towards us, even tractors rolled towards us,” he says.
The door of the patrol car was slammed shut and then they sped off.
There are now two ongoing investigations into coercion because the police car was “wedged in”.
According to the police, one of the accused tractor drivers comes from Warngau, the other from the region.
Mayor Thurnhuber is still shocked.
“Where does this hate come from?” he asks himself.
There is no high level of crime in the area around refugee accommodation, he says.
Warngau already had a container village for 50 refugees in the middle of the town center.
“There wasn’t a single crime for seven years.” In 2016, before the home was built, the citizens’ meeting went smoothly, Thurnhuber remembers.
“Suddenly everything is completely different.
My feeling is that there is a lot of dissatisfaction right now.”
Refugee accommodation gym with miserable conditions: “It’s unbearable there”
At the moment, citizens are also forming who do not want to let public opinion in the village stand like this.
One is country doctor Winfried Dresel.
He took the microphone at the heated meeting and called for more humanity.
There is no optimal solution, says the doctor.
“But the refugee home in Warngau is the best option at the moment.” Dresel looks after people in the gyms once a week.
“It's unbearable there.” He speaks of psychological problems and some residents have suicidal thoughts.
“Many people come to me asking to be moved.” Anything, says Dresel, is better than the gym.
The refugee home will come.
“If the commitments from the ministry are there, we won’t wait a day,” says District Administrator von Löwis.
Meanwhile, cohesion in the community is crumbling.
When asked about the home, a loud argument breaks out at the local regulars' table.
Most people believe that problems come to Warngau with the refugees.
“You can just build a police station out of there,” says one.
“We've known each other for 40 years and now we're starting to argue,” another.
Some of the Gschwendtners' posters were defaced by unknown people.
One says: “FCK AFD” – Fuck AfD.
“Our daughter was approached by someone at Carnival,” the farmer’s wife says.
“He asked her why her parents were such Nazis.”
(Max Wochinger)