Der Görli bleibt auf!

A plan to fence off Kreuzberg’s beloved Görlitzer Park has sparked fierce debate. The issue? Drug dealing. Berlin’s conservative mayor Kai Wegner wants to close the park after dark to curb the trade, but locals see it as an assault on their neighbourhood’s spirit, and the start of the gentrification they’ve always resisted.

Görlitzer Park — or Görli, as locals affectionately call it, has long been a bustling neighbourhood hub in Kreuzberg. On a typical day, families barbecue spare ribs to Afrobeats, children climb the pirate ship playground by Wiener Straße, and friends gather on the grassy hills after Sunday pancakes at Annelies. Since the 1990s, Görli has been more than just a park, it’s where generations of Berliners mix, embodying the hood’s anarchic spirit. Come nightfall, the families thin out, the barbecue smoke fades, and the heavy smell of marijuana takes over: the park becomes a drug bazaar. A reality that’s placed Görli at the center of Berlin’s urban policy wars for the last 15 years.

Görlitzer Park: More Weed than Grass

Here the dealers are hard to miss. Walk from Schlesisches Tor toward Reichenberger Kiez and you pass groups of young West African men — from Gambia, Nigeria, Guinea, or Sierra Leone — selling drugs openly.

Many arrived during the 2015 refugee crisis, fleeing conflict or poverty, only to face slow asylum processes and a legal system that prevents them from working while their claims are reviewed.

Cannabis dominates the trade, with hash and marijuana filling the air with their earthy scent, but MDMA and cocaine also circulate. The transactions follow a set routine: a nod, a whisper, a brief walk to some bushes, a handshake and the deal is done… You’ll see some people in the park looking behind a trash can or a bench. That’s where the dealers hide their supplies. Nearly all dealers are African men; nearly all buyers are white, middle-class Berliners or tourists. Police describe a frustrating cycle: they arrest dealers without IDs or fixed addresses, who return within days.

According to police statistics, Görli is Berlin’s top park for drugs. This earned Görli the name “Germany’s most dangerous drug park”, by conservative tabloid BILD, even though the numbers have been sharply decreasing in recent years. Last year, police recorded 936 offences compared to 1,373 the year before.

From Zero to Pink Tolerance

Over the years, several attempts have been made to ‘solve’ Görlitzer Park’s drug problem. Each one was met with fierce resistance from either locals or the police.

The first major crackdown came in 2015, when police announced a ‘zero tolerance policy.’ The strategy was simple: no drugs allowed in the park — at all. Even possession of small amounts of cannabis would mean criminal prosecution. The policy backfired. Within weeks, hundreds of Kreuzbergers poured into the park, smoking joints en masse for a defiant ‘Solidarity Kiff-in’ (a pun on ‘Kiffen,’ the German verb for smoking marijuana). Even then-district mayor Monika Herrmann opposed the policy, proposing instead to open a cannabis café on the grounds. The episode deepened the rift between Berlin authorities and local residents, and by October 2017, the policy was suspended.

In 2018, the city tried a new approach. They appointed a “Park manager” and green-jacketed “Park runners” to mediate potential conflicts, making the park feel safer for residents. A year later, pioneering Görlitzer Park manager Cengiz Demirci launched the so-called “pink zones”, spray-painted designated areas where dealers could carry out drug transactions without police interference. For a brief moment, it seemed Berlin might embrace a softer approach, more in line with Kreuzberg’s ethos of openness and tolerance.

But the pendulum swung back. Police unions decried the measure, while anti-drug campaigner Marlene Mortler declared it a “capitulation of our constitutional state” — giving “dealers a license to deal.” Within weeks, the experiment was scrapped. Since then, new proposals have come and gone — more police, more social workers, more tabloid headlines — while each summer, Görli’s ecosystem adapted with that unique mix of BBQ and Cannabis hanging in the air. Meanwhile, declining drug offenses seemed to herald a potential truce… until new conservative mayor Kai Wegner decided it was time to uproot the problem.

Berlin’s New Mayor Flexes His Muscles

In April 2023, Berlin got its first conservative mayor in more than two decades — and by September, Kai Wegner decided to take matters into his own hands. First, he put Görlitzer Park under the direct authority of the Berlin government, stripping control from the Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain district (long governed by Green and leftist parties). His most controversial move followed swiftly: to erect a fence around the park. Fifteen gates. Closed every night from 11 PM to 5 AM. Round-the-clock surveillance. The stated goal? To restore order after years of what he called unchecked chaos. “We’ve been witnessing an intolerable situation here for years”, he said. “We’ve learned that policing alone doesn’t bring the situation under control”.

“Görli Bleibt Auf!” Is What They Say in Kreuzberg

‘‘What kind of solution is this?” asks Emma, a 30-year-old mother of two who lives metres from the park and regularly takes her children to Boot Spielplatz, the park’s beloved wooden pirate ship playground. “I’m not for drugs, but a fence is no solution. It’s going to ruin the atmosphere and just move the dealers closer to our front door!”

She’s not the only one decrying the consequences of Wegner’s plan. For many, the fence will simply relocate drug dealing to other parks in Berlin — most likely Neukölln’s Hasenheide, or worse: to the adjacent streets, right outside their buildings.

To many, fencing off the park feels less like a response to crime than a step towards sanitising Kreuzberg’s legendary chaotic flair. “This park has always been open twenty-four hours. It’s where I walk my dog and go for a run,” says another local resident from Lübbener Straße. “A fence goes against the spirit of our neighbourhood. We don’t need gated zones here!”

Residents have protested the fence since its announcement in September 2023. Some of them have federated into Görli 24/7, a group actively campaigning against what they see as a sticking-plaster solution that ignores the roots of the problem.

“Drug use and addiction won’t be solved by closing Görlitzer Park at night! What people need is access to healthcare and specialised programmes,” argues Flö, a veteran Kreuzberger in his fifties. Görli 24/7 includes members aged 20 to 82. Together they organise community events and “loud protests”, like last June’s Rave Against the Zaun, a “festival of resistance against fences, borders, walls, and Kai Wegner”.

For them, the focus should be on socialsupport, healthcare, and community programmes, not repression. “The Senate is cutting funding for social projects while spending heavily on repression,” he adds, as police vans roll across the parched grass near the “Pamukkale-Brunnens” – the concrete remains of what was once the park’s majestic terraced fountain, now a favourite hangout spot for park regulars.

Meanwhile, former park manager Cengiz Demirci stressed another issue: many dealers are asylum seekers barred from working while their claims are processed. “If they were allowed to work, 90 percent would stop immediately,” he told RBB. For him, the answer lies in Germany’s treatment of asylum seekers.

On 23 July 2025, construction workers began laying the fence’s concrete foundations. That morning, a small crowd of Görli regulars gathered near the Pamukkale Fountain over breakfast and coffee. A quiet protest. A mournful one. Needless to say, Berlin has a touchy relationship with walls.