Wedding ohne waffen
Not every factory on this site is abandoned, leider. A weapons factory run by Rheinmetall – Germany’s largest arms manufacturer – is about to start making lethal weapons at its plant beside Humboldthain in Wedding to make the company even richer.
Rheinmetall supplies weapon systems, equipment and artillery to Israel, Ukraine and other places where wars are waged and people are killed. It’s a hugely lucrative business.
Last May, Rheinmetall presented at its AGM financial figures for 2025 boasting sales of €9.9 billion, up from €7.7 billion the year before.
If you don’t know Rheinmetall, which is a proud sponsor of Borussia Dortmund, it was founded in 1889 as Rheinische Metallwaaren- und Maschinenfabrik Actiengesellschaft. It was one of Germany’s biggest armaments manufacturers during both World Wars, and of course, like most successful German companies, it made use of forced labor during World War II.
Now, with all the wars going on and people to kill, Rheinmetall has a huge backlog of orders. Evidently it needs to start producing weapons at the factory on Scheringstraße – officially known as Rheinmetall Waffe Munition GmbH – to help it cope with the burgeoning demand.
But not everyone is happy about this. People who live in the neighborhood are not enamored by the thoughts of a lethal weapons factory in their midst.
As revolutionary historian Nathaniel Flakin pointed out, “the German bourgeoisie has defended the genocide in Gaza with the false claim that Palestinians have military facilities in civilian areas. Isn’t this the same thing? Are Weddingers used as human shields?”
Flakin does historical walking tours of the area through Revolutionary Berlin and they were prevented by police from walking past the factory a couple of weeks ago. The police have been a near constant presence for the last couple of months and Rheinmetall has also hired security to guard the site, while it has beefed up its fence with razor wire and added spikes.
As I said, weapons manufacturing is a lucrative business, we wouldn’t want anything to disturb it, would we?
The Berliner Alliance against Weapons production (Berliner Bündnis gegen Waffenproduktion) has organized a week of protests and actions including a demonstration against the factory starting at Gesundbrunnen S+U Bahnhof at 2pm on Saturday.
See you there.
