“A grab at the can”

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With a new brochure, the city of Frankfurt wants to woo guests – also for a visit to the red light district of the station quarter. Frankfurt's city dean is outraged and even calls the administration's action a "grab in the toilet".

Interviewer: TheMunicipal Tourism and Congress GmbH would like to attract more visitors to Frankfurt and the station district. There is also a brothel or two there. "If you want to market this city, you have to show the 'rough redlight district' too. It's a case of top or bottom," says the head of tourism to the FAZ. When you think of Frankfurt's station district, many people might have something like a Reeperbahn scenario of Hamburg in mind. Is that really how it is when you walk through the streets? Is there so much red light?

Dr. Johannes zu Eltz (City Dean of Frankfurt): From the red light point of view it is perhaps like on the Reeperbahn. But romantic and so that your heart rises and you like to be there, it is not at all. There the misery predominates and that swells there also from each crack.

Interviewer: There is now a brochure that is to be distributed in the future as an official tourism guide to foreign visitors and at trade fairs in order to promote "hip, trendy Frankfurt. In it, trendy restaurants, brothels and animation bars are advertised. What do you think?
zu Eltz: I am proud of my city and I like living in it. We also have a good, fit and efficient administration, where there is also inherent decency. Measured by this standard, this would be a real grab in the toilet. What the tourist office is doing is totally unacceptable.
Interviewer: You probably weren't asked as a church either, or?
zu Eltz: Not anyway, but you don't have to. But that's why I can give my opinion without being asked. I have to think of what happened in New York in the Gatsby era, when the rich white upper classes from the Upper East Side went to Harlem: Slumming was what they called it there, so going to slums and getting creeped out and then going back home and doing normal things afterwards. I find this peep-show tourism in the Bahnhofsviertel lowly.
Interviewer: One of these brothels has as a unique selling point that only transsexuals work on the fourth floor. Tourism strategists speak of a real marketing factor. The so-called "Bahnhofsviertelacht" in Frankfurt takes place today, with many visitors expected to attend. According to the FAZ, a brothel operator is to open his brothel so that visitors can see what it's like inside. What do you say to it?
zu Eltz: Bahnhofsviertel night has already been a success in recent years. What to say? If it should be so one, then I cannot understand how one can feast on the misery, the need and the exploitation of others. The edge to crime is wide and long. But it gets a new quality by the fact that it is really pushed by the city. This outrages me very much.
Interviewer: What then are the churches doing to minimize the overall misery in Frankfurt's station district?
zu Eltz: The Mother Teresa Sisters, who can be recognized even from a distance, are there with poor-feeding for the drug addicts. There are two prere rooms, in front of which the misery of the long-term addicts then really gathers. Nearby there is a church-inspired tea room, there is from the Protestant colleagues a former deacon church, which is now open to people from the station district. So, there are some offers. But in any case we are not engaged in the glorification of prostitution.

The interview was conducted by Uta Vorbrodt.

His official car license plate bears the letters HH-SH – as if made for an auxiliary bishop who works in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein. On Thursday, Hans-Jochen Jaschke celebrates his 20th anniversary as a bishop. This makes the 67-year-old the lone record holder in the north. No Catholic or Protestant bishop has ever been in office here so long.

Rich is the range of topics with which Jaschke has gained notoriety far beyond Hamburg. In the Catholic Bishops' Conference, he is responsible for interreligious dialogue and has thus, at the latest since 11. September 2001 a very explosive ie in his care. The theologian defends Muslims against the general suspicion of terrorist activities, but at the same time calls on them to distance themselves clearly from Islamist violence. Again and again Jaschke praises the good relationship between Catholics and Jews and calls for vigilance against any form of hostility towards Jews. Jaschke was born on 29. Born in Beuthen, Upper Silesia, in September 1941. After the expulsion, his family settled in Buckeburg, Lower Saxony, in 1945. Jaschke's theology and philosophy studies in Frankfurt and Munster were followed by his ordination to the priesthood in 1967. In 1974 he received his doctorate in Munich under Joseph Ratzinger, today's Pope Benedict XVI. Until 1983 he directed the Niels Stensen College in Munster, after which he was pastor in Quakenbruck. On 8. Jaschke received his episcopal ordination in Osnabruck on January 1989; after the establishment of the Archdiocese of Hamburg in 1995, he was appointed Episcopal Vicar for Schleswig-Holstein. In the Bishops' Conference, he is also responsible for the Federal Police and the Federal Border Guard. Jaschke can sufficiently prove his skill in ecumenical matters in the Nordic diaspora. Not only since the "ecumenical Catholic Day" in Hamburg in 2000 has the clergyman repeatedly appeared with the Protestant Bishop Maria Jepsen. The latter praises him for his enthusiasm for ecumenism. "I always liked the combination of joie de vivre and theological depth that I found in him," Jepsen congratulates on anniversary.

A welcome guest on the social scene A welcome guest on the social stage, he does not shy away from plain speaking. At the Katholikentag in Osnabruck, he was the one who, on the podium of the "Initiative Kirche von unten" (Church from below initiative), acknowledged painful mistakes made by the Catholic Church on the subject of sexual abuse by clergymen. He castigates any right-wing sentiment as a "brown swamp," but also warns politicians and society not to be blind in the left eye. On his anniversary, Schleswig-Holstein's Minister President Peter Harry Carstensen (CDU) attests to his negotiating skills and sensitivity. In this way, he had played a decisive role in the state treaty between Schleswig-Holstein and the Holy See, which was signed on 12. January is signed. Hamburg's First Mayor Ole von Beust (CDU) adds: "During these 20 years, the people of Hamburg have been able to get to know him as a theologically and philosophically highly educated man, who in this respect is in the best tradition of his church."During sermons, the man with the distinctive voice always keeps an eye on his wristwatch placed on the ambo; a good speech gets by even with little time. In the summer, Jaschke revealed to a tabloid that he had a beer after a bike ride around the Alster lake. In the fall, he expressed concern in the same newspaper about the church's failures in the face of the November pogroms of 1938. That was before the time of Hans-Jochen Jaschke. But what does that matter to one whose bishop's motto, "Until the day appears," spans entire eras.

A man rides his bicycle through the destroyed city of Duma © Hummam Sheikh Ali

On the tenth anniversary of the Syrian conflict, aid organizations have warned of a further worsening of the humanitarian crisis. Aid agencies cannot replace a political solution to the conflict, he said.

This was emphasized by the president of Diakonie-Katastrophenhilfe Dagmar Pruin. "The EU and the German government also have a duty here."

This includes, for example, the active support of the Interception Committee, in which representatives of the government and the opposition have been negotiating since 2019. Here, it must be ensured that the interests of the Syrian population are also taken into account in a realignment of the country, said Pruin.

Since the fighting began in March 2011, aid organizations estimate that some 600.000 people killed. In addition, he said, more than 12 million people have been displaced and are now fleeing inside and outside the country, including nearly six million children.

Nearly 80 percent of the Syrian population currently lives in poverty. The humanitarian crisis in the country has recently been exacerbated by the Corona pandemic, increasing poverty and the risk of sexual violence.

Expanding humanitarian aid

Together with nine other organizations, including the aid organizations Care, Terre des Hommes and Save the Children, Diakonie called for an expansion of humanitarian aid in Syria. At the same time, they lamented the lack of efforts for a political solution to the conflict. At the next Syria conference hosted by the EU in Brussels on 29. and 30. March must send a signal that the world has not forgotten the country.

Criticism was also directed at the sanctions imposed on the country. For example, the blockade of money transfers from the U.S. and Europe to Syria makes it virtually impossible to send the necessary funds to help the population, stressed the international Catholic relief agency Aid to the Church in Need.

This financial support is central to ensuring that food, medical supplies and clothing can be purchased locally, said the executive president, Thomas Heine-Geldern. "It is our duty to help the suffering civilian population in Syria. The Christian minority in particular is in danger of disappearing."

More prere on political decision-makers is also demanded by the Alliance Development Helps. As long as no political solution is found, however, at least humanitarian aid must be unhindered, said the organization's executive director, Peter Mucke. For this, Germany and the EU would have to enforce border openings that would allow humanitarian workers access to people in need.

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