Damage from a 2022 tornado in Lippstadt. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Ath, CC BY-SA 4.0
Berlin has it all this summer: poisonous caterpillars, parasitic worms, record-breaking heatwaves, a single rogue fox in Reinickendorf that has been murdering local pets. Now, we've also seen a tornado, just outside the city's border.
The wind vortex touched down in Fürstenwalde, a town in Brandenburg roughly 30 kilometres outside the city, on Wednesday night. Local residents had zero warning of the twister, which transformed the Paul-Frost Ring housing estate into a debris field in under a minute. "It all happened so incredibly fast. Everything was flying around," one local resident told rbb. "It was pure horror."
HEIST is a worker-owned online magazine, founded by writers and editors who after years working across Berlin's media landscape believed something essential was missing.
Anyone living here has felt a growing gap between the city as it actually is and the version being served up by mainstream outlets. We experienced that disconnect firsthand. We saw political censorship shape coverage decisions and felt the weight of billionaire ownership land directly on our work. It reached a point where we could either keep going along with it, or try to build something better.
That's why we created HEIST.
And look at you: scrolling, clicking, squinting at blurred text just to get a little further. If you'll go to that much effort to read HEIST, you can surely give us one email. That's the whole price, and the rest of the story is right behind it.
Real journalism costs money. We commission the hard-hitting, well-reported, long-form work everyone wants to read but nobody seems to publish anymore.
The future of this city is still in the balance. We intend to be part of that struggle. We hope that you'll join us.
