It’s never been that easy to go for a swim in the city. Any day when temperatures rise over 25°C, frantic queues form outside each of Berlin’s 11 public outdoor pools. You’ll stand sweating for at least half an hour, toe to toe with truculent teens in crop tops and hot toddlers with their overheating, overburdened parents, before you finally get to enter.
This summer, it got even harder to get a swim as Berlin was plagued by what local newspapers described as a “wave of violence” at municipal pools. Almost every other day, there was a headline about a water-adjacent rampage. Forget the war in Ukraine. Even Germany’s Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, ended up commenting on Berlin’s public pool scraps. They also made the international news.
In one incident, about 50 teenagers took control of a giant slide and refused to leave. In another, neo-Nazis gathered to protest against immigrants coming for a paddle. At several pools, lifeguards got into fistfights with punters. In an open letter published by Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, pool staff described their jobs as “psychological terror”.
So, why was this happening? Sociologists say toxic masculinity plays a role, as groups of young fellows use the public space as a stage, trying to out-macho other young fellows. One pool employee told journalists the high temperatures were to blame: the hotter it was in the city, the crazier people were.
Just before summer, Berlin authorities agreed that, in the interests of gender parity, women could go topless at public pools, and another pool staffer believed the near-naked females were addling young men’s brains. The head of the German society for bathing culture, Eric Voss, suggested it might be the result of financial frustration as more families couldn’t afford to go on holiday this year.
Predictably, right-wing politicians blamed local kids with an “immigration background”. Even more predictably, the country’s far-right politicians suggested deporting them. “If you don’t protect your borders, you’ll have to close your swimming pools,” was their somewhat hilarious warning.
Eventually, a special committee was set up to figure out how to resolve the city’s poolside problems.
More police on duty at the pools, they suggested. No, the police had enough to do and their uniforms are too heavy for pool patrol. More security staff? But hang on, the security staff were the ones getting into trouble. Only law-abiding family groups allowed in at peak times? This was hardly a fair distribution of state resources.
In the end, the answer involved installing video cameras at entrances and getting guests to show their ID upon arrival.
It’s hard to say whether that’s helped. As many experts also pointed out, Berlin’s inner-city pools have a history of the occasional brawl. After all, they’re public spaces and often crowded. Hundreds of thousands of locals go there. In fact, last year, 57 violent crimes were recorded at Berlin’s pools. In 2019, there were 71. This summer, there have been only about 40 so far.
The pool in my neighbourhood, Columbiabad, is one of the city’s most notorious and it has closed early several times this summer due to brawls. But it’s actually a lovely space, made up of several huge swimming pools in a large park with leafy trees for shade.
On those really sweltering days, it can be hard to find a place to put your towel, and when you get into the water, it’s more a matter of immersion, because it’s too crowded to actually swim anywhere. Yet somehow taking a cold bath, shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of strangers, encapsulates both the joys and frustrations of summertime in the big city.
