My school friend Rudi’s very first car was an ancient VW Golf Diesel from the stock of Deutsche Post. It had been sprayed from yellow to black more than badly, it looked horrible, but we were happy to let Rudi drive us everywhere: to the kebab shop, to the gas station to get beer (in school slang: “Shell Bar”), to the bathing pond. Rudi was one of the few who had a car at all and at the time we didn’t care that the 1970s diesel was a sluggish soot emitter. Our environmental awareness was, shall we say, still growing.
Hardly anyone who didn’t want to come across like their own grandfather came up with the idea of buying one of these diesels for themselves. Later, however, when the diesels were only called turbodiesels, were much faster than petrol engines and also consumed less fuel, they were suddenly more in demand than petrol engines, not least because they were supposedly just as clean. That this was not true was shown by the diesel scandal and the fact that the engines are still blowing far too much of the irritant gas nitrogen dioxide into the world.
The air in Munich may have become cleaner thanks to more modern engines, but the EU limit values for nitrogen dioxide that have been in force since 2010 have been broken year after year, especially on the Mittlerer Ring. The city no longer wants to accept that Landshuter Allee is considered the dirtiest street in Germany – and is tightening the driving bans from February 2023 on for diesel vehicles with the Euro 4 emissions standard, and later also for Euro 5 vehicles. Many exceptions are to apply until April 2024, for example for residents and craftsmen. But then everyone who wants to continue entering the environmental zone with their old delivery vehicles or cars will have to apply for a special permit. It remains to be seen whether it will achieve anything, critics describe the regulation as anti-business and disproportionate. My colleague René Hofmann initially sees the new regulation as a “bet on falling pollutant levels without too many interventions”. However, if this does not work, he fears far-reaching consequences, including socio-political ones, as he writes in his commentary.
At least the city has now reached an agreement with the Verkehrsclub Deutschland and the Deutsche Umwelthilfe, who had complained about compliance with the limit values. At the same time, the city council avoids a court imposing a ban on him, which would have left him no room for maneuver in terms of time and exceptions.
THE DAY IN MUNICH
Lecturer has to leave college after night out in the pub Because of “unacceptable statements and gestures” at a meeting with students, the Munich School of Philosophy parted ways with a new employee just a few days after the start of the semester. (SZ Plus)
Two days extension for the Wiesn Next year, the city council wants the Oktoberfest to end on Tuesday. The politicians are worried about the prices at the Oidn Wiesn.
A monument disappears Where once the poet prince Paul Heyse received artists and intellectuals, today there is decay. His villa is considered the last example of original garden city architecture in Maxvorstadt. Now her end is heralded. (SZ Plus)
Last dignity for the homeless When people die without a real home, they are buried in any of the 26 cemeteries in Munich. Now, for the first time, the city has designed a burial ground just for her.
Students can move back in five years – if things go well There are 1,056 empty apartments in two high-rise buildings in the student town of Freimann. In the state parliament, for the first time, the Ministry of Building gives a rough schedule for the renovation of the dilapidated dormitories.
“I see totalitarian tendencies emerging here” Anti-Semitism is spreading again, warns psychologist Louis Lewitan. At a panel discussion in City Hall, he criticized that Germany was doing everything it could to be the winner in the “supreme discipline of forgetting.”
Neo-Nazi jailed for calling for manslaughter The judge does not see a favorable social prognosis for the right-wing multiple offender Statzberger. The former party leader of the “Third Way” gets off with a fine for being responsible for inflammatory election posters.
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