It would be remiss to concede that there was something brilliant about Milo Rau’s new production of Richard Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) at the Deutsche Oper without immediately adding that you should not buy a ticket; it would be a waste of your time and money. However, this ethically and artistically bankrupt staging of Wagner’s opera, whose musical performance rose at its occasional best to the level of the professional, did have one merit, albeit an accidental one: it revealed the limits of what German liberal society permits itself to see and to say.
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.
