BERLIN: A Berlin theater that has set up an outdoor swimming pool scrapped plans Friday to reserve it for black children and young people for one afternoon, citing a backlash and security fears sparked by “racist agitation.”
The Volksbuehne theater and the anti-racism organization Each One Teach One (EOTO) had intended the event, for black “children, young people and their relatives,” as “a positive measure to support structurally disadvantaged groups.”
However, they said this had sparked inflammatory media coverage as well as racist emails and threats of violence that had raised safety concerns.
The theater’s new artistic director Matthias Lilienthal recently launched the pool project for eight weeks this summer, in which people can book free time slots online, with some days reserved for partner organizations.
One of the groups, EOTO, is a publicly funded group that runs programs for people of black and African diaspora backgrounds.
