Karl Haupt, Petition, eviction from artist studios (Cologne)

Dear InterNations Members,

As some of you might already know, I am a Cologne photographer and have a studio space in an artists building run by the city.

The Cultural Office of Cologne is trying to evict me and some of my colleagues from our studios under questionable circumstances. We are five artists and photographers and we have been resisting being thrown out for several years now. These evictions are not only immanent now, but will affect many other artists in Cologne in the future.

As an initial reaction we informed all members of the Cultural Council, a part of the Cologne City Council, about our situation. The Cultural Council, which is composed of politicians of all political parties in Cologne, decided twice already, unanimously, to stop our evictions. Directives were sent to the Cultural Office accordingly.

The Cultural Office is however not bound legally to follow these directives. Instead it does what it wants.

As a consequence, we sued the City. A decision has not been reached yet, but we are sure we will be successful in the light of the Cultural Council's strong support.

However, I am facing a forced eviction in the next few weeks if nothing else happens. Thus, this petition, with its the link below:

Protected content

Therein, my colleagues and myself ask you for your support of our petition called "Räumung von Künstlerateliers stoppen!" (Stop the evictions from artists studios!) on the OpenPetition platform.

Further details to the background are on the petition page, unfortunately only in German, but the petition only repeats my short description above in a longer version.

Here a guide to using and signing the petition page:

Please click on the link, fill in your name and email address, and sign the petition (digitally with a click).
You will receive an email answer that you will have to confirm to make the signature valid.
If the email answer doesn't appear in your mail box, check you Spam folder.
Sometimes the process doesn't work the first time, so maybe you might have to try again until it does. If it still doesn't work please let me know and I will see about what to do.

It would be very helpful if you could forward this Information to your contacts as well. The number of signatures count!

The petition will be sent to the relevant city officials, such as the major, the head of the Cultural Department and city politicians.

Thanks for your engagement!

Sincerely,

Karl Haupt