It’s not a real present without this one: We voted again – and chose the most embarrassing Berliner:innen 2021. It is our traditional, satirical, cheerfully serious, screamingly unfair review of the year. Which will be published in the last tipBerlin issue 2021 (E-day 22. December) gives. Here’s a little insight into the madness of the year for you. We wish you good entertainment – and congratulate Volker Bruch.
Place 1: "Schwurbylon Berlin" – Volker Bruch, Actors
The most embarrassing Berliner:innen 2021, top place: Volker Bruch, actor. Photo: imago/xim.gs
When dancing on the volcano, the "Babylon Berlin" beau must have gotten too much heat in his brain. There’s no other way to explain Volker Bruch’s transformation in 2021 from serial dandy and fundraiser for refugees to poster boy for conspiracy ideology. In spring, he started his over-the-top days for "Schwurbylon Berlin": as one of the presumed masterminds behind the #allesdichtmachen campaign, which deserved a "Bambi" for particularly unpleasant performances. Break: "I am an actor. And I am afraid."
While colleagues like Meret Becker apologized so hastily after criticism of the action, as if they had recorded the Coronapolitik-skeptical, dismayingly unfunny clips in the Absinthrausch, Bruch followed up in the fall with the video campaign #allesaufdentisch. There it was then fact-flexible "Expert:innen", which recited, what some Hygienedemo-Hansel around-assert since months. Speaking of which: because the Weimar-trained resistance spirit Bruch is a man of the people, he thanked the participants of an anti-vaccination demo in Vienna in an Instagram post (later deleted). Also present there: FPoler and neo-Nazis with "Heimatschutz statt Mundschutz" banners.
Forecast 2022 Podcast "Cui Bono: WTF happened to Volker Bruch", twelve episodes.
6th place: "Insane vote" – Berlin election chaos at all levels
Na waits! Election day in Berlin means: waiting, hoping, trembling. Photo: Imago/Emmanuele Contini
Only in Berlin can one have the excellent idea of organizing a marathon on a triple election (Bundestag, House of Representatives, BVVs) in addition to a referendum vote. For hours, Berliners held out in front of the polling stations, here and there the voting documents ran out, sometimes they were the wrong ones, the supplies failed to arrive due to the marathon road closures, and some were even able to adjust their vote to the 6 p.m. election forecast, because they were not allowed to go to the polls until well after the actual polls closed. It would be too easy to blame this solely on the state election director Petra Michaelis, who resigned. Otherwise, there is purely no one in city politics responsible for the chaos. But that on all levels.
Forecast 2022 OSCE election observers looking for housing in inner city neighborhoods.
Place 10: "Minimum scorn" – Kagan Sumer, Gorilla CEO
The Joule-Dealer among the start-up entrepreneurs extended late capitalism by feudal master-and-servant relationships. His consumption-boosting model: that urban middle-class couch potatoes will have their chips and arugula leaves carried to their doorsteps by underpaid sherpas on wheels. It’s just too bad that these "riders" then went on strike. The Hire& Fire CEO then fired some speedsters. After the SPD’s victory in the federal elections, he played the social revolutionary. He raised the minimum wage to twelve euros – a patronizing dozen that will become law anyway with the traffic light government.
Forecast2022 Has the Gorilla Campus built at the EastSideGallery – with underground parking for the riders.
Place 32: "Career pinch" – Franziska Giffey, new governing mayor of Berlin, SPD
Only patience! Franziska Giffey, top candidate for the SPD Berlin, casting her vote in the elections to the House of Representatives. Photo: Imago/Political-Moments
"For Berlin it’s enough" was the bon mot when Franziska Giffey resigned as federal family minister in May, but remained the SPD’s top candidate for the House of Representatives election – after she finally lost her doctorate in the plagiarism affair surrounding her dissertation. Why different standards should apply to a minister than to a head of the senate, can’t be of any concern to her now. Very few people manage to make a career for themselves with a career break.
Forecast 2022 Much trouble with the left.
Square 61: "Love hurts" – Richard Kruspe, Rammstein guitarist
Rammstein guitarist Kruspe: Stalingrad version of a classic. Photo: Imago/APP-Photo
What can Elvis and the Pet Shop Boys, what Richard Zven Kruspe can not do? Singing "Always On My Mind" without sounding like a sadistic gym teacher on a courtship display. In a duet with band buddy Till Lindemann, who thankfully spared us libidinous horror poems in 2021, Kruspe tortures himself on the new album of his solo project Emigrate through the Stalingrad version of what should be (!) unkaputtbar beautiful classic – as well as single-handedly through other, in sauerkrautigste English poetry Brachialflops, which make us wish, the Rammstein guitarist would rather rock the Duolingo language app than the electric.
Forecast 2022 Cover "I Will Always Love You" with Alice Cooper.
Place 76: "Sunstroke" – Dirty Doering, DJ
Like a wandering bird on LSD, Bar 25 legend Dirty Doering headed south on the run from the winter lockdown. Feel-good asylum was found in Tanzania, whose then-president John Magufuli had the virus "removed" from the country with the help of a national prayer. Shortly before he died – rumored to be from Corona. Meanwhile, bon vivant Velten Doring chatted with the Berlin press about the benefits of such, ahem, creative pandemic policies. Criticism, on the other hand, rolled off him: "People find parties impossible, but they don’t get upset about the wars all over the world."Who tells him?
Forecast 2022 Ayahuasca cure for Omicron.
Square 82: "Witching hour" – Lisha and Lou, Youtuber:inside
Those were still times! Lou& Lisha 2016 on the 1. Berlin Bohemian Party By Julian F.M. Stoeckel with, exactly, Julian F.M. Stoeckel (right – NOT on the embarrassment list this year…) Photo: Imago/APP-Photo
The Fitness-Youtuber:innen have made over to Malle. Besides trash TV work credits, the power couple gave us a book about supernatural encounters: "Total paranormal!" In an interview, Lisha spoke of a demon, "the disgusting, pale, white face with the tousled, black hair that had visited me once before in my dreams and pretended to be Lou". If we were Lou, we’d still take more care with our outer appearance from now on. Safe is safe.
Forecast 2022 Next Exit: Jungle Camp.
Place 89: "Plankengott" – Olli Schulz, Musician and boatman
Musician Schulz: Better not count on him. Photo: Imago/Reichwein
Olli Schulz and his congenial partner Fynn Kliemann bought Gunter Gabriel’s dilapidated houseboat and, well, renovated it. This rightly became a Netflix drama series that showed the two gentlemen remarkably lost. Especially Olli showed deficits, not only when calculating (not Olli’s strength) or touching (also not Olli’s strength). They celebrated themselves afterwards anyway – in front of a team that looked as worn out as the boat before.
Forecast 2022 Olli Schulz is seen more often in front of the hunting lodge Grunewald. Hopefully nothing needs to be touched up.
Place 100: "Old administrator" – Klaus Wowereit, Ex-governing mayor, SPD
Klaus Wowereit: Welcome back! Photo: Imago/Future Image
Welcome back to this list, dear ex-governor, we missed you a bit already. But when we saw this interview at RBB in October, in which you shouted at the Berlin administration in the best of moods that you were "worse off today than any district savings bank," we quickly wanted to ask again: "Save until it squeaks" – this sentence from 2001 was from you, wasn’t it??
Forecast 2022 Big party for the tenth anniversary of "Most Embarrassing Berliner 2012. Congratulations!
Embarrassing, embarrassing: the results of the past years
The results of the past years you find here – even if we had there still no best and only misery.
- Corona brought a lot of misery: the most embarrassing Berliners 2020
- The most embarrassing Berliners 2019.
- These Berliners were particularly embarrassing in 2018. People of the city.
- And in 2016 these Berliners were above all: embarrassing.
And then in 2020 there was another special feature, after all the horror and horror. For the first time we have also chosen the 25 favorite people from Berlin. You can find the list here.
tipBerlin with all 100 embarrassing – in stores and online
The new tipBerlin with really all places and reasons you can find from 22. December in the magazine trade. Of course you can also order it online from Wednesday.