Introduction
How to read a fire?

Whether intentionally set or as a result of a technical defect, fires are an omnipresent and recurring phenomenon in refugee camps and residential buildings inhabited by migrant and post-migrant communities. Fires can be interpreted not only as a weapon used by right-wing extremists but also as a means by which refugees resist the precarity imposed upon them by laws and policies. Structural fires, a phenomenon that has received little attention to date, often arise 'unintentionally' through electrical fires or faulty equipment and can be seen as a symbol of the constant state of vulnerability in which refugees find themselves.

The comparison of different types of fires is in no way intended to diminish the severity of right-wing arson attacks. Rather, the patterns left by these fires become intangible witnesses to a much larger system of structural injustice and violence against migrant and post-migrant individuals in Germany. The policies, bureaucracies, and laws of the German migration regime, along with their spatial manifestations, are central to a historical policy of deterrence and marginalization, which lays the foundation for a ‘German us’ and a ‘Migrant Other.’

Three chapters on fires are intended to examine fire incidents within a broader political, legal, and societal context, addressing, among other things, the following questions:

To what extent do politicians and journalists, through their influence, contribute to shaping public opinion and, beyond that, to inciting an arson attack from outside? What role did Helmut Kohl and his party colleagues play in the violent right-wing escalation at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s? Why does a resident set fire to their own mattress? What connection does the 1993 Asylum Seekers Benefits Act have, for example, with a fire started by residents in Kleinaitingen in 2003? And, to what extent should a fire caused by a technical defect be reconsidered beyond simply being labeled an ‘accident’?

Arson File I
Fire as a Weapon
Arson Attacks from Outside

Between 1980 and 2024, 104 people lost their lives in arson attacks from outside. Arson is just one of many forms of right-wing violence directed against migrant and post-migrant individuals.

Duisburg-Wanheimerort
and the Politics of Deterrence

In Duisburg-Wanheimerort, on August 26, 1984, two adults and seven children died in an arson attack on a house primarily inhabited by 'guest workers' and their families:

Döndü Satır (40 years), Zeliha Turhan (18 years), Rasim Turhan (15 years), Tarık Turhan (50 days), Çiğdem Satır (7 years), Ümit Satır (5 years), and Songül Satır (4 years).

Despite multiple arson attacks on refugee shelters, the perpetrator's right-wing motive was dismissed. She was accused of pyromania by the court and committed to a psychological institution, where she died in 2010. To this day, the case has not been classified as a right-wing murder.

The attack in Duisburg cannot be understood without considering the racism against people of Turkish descent, which became increasingly socially acceptable from the 1970s onward, fueled by politicians and media institutions. Ramazan Satır, the father and husband of the deceased in Duisburg, came to Germany in 1973 through recruitment agreements made between East and West Germany and countries like Turkey, Morocco, Vietnam, Italy, and many others between 1955 and 1986. Employed in the low-wage sector, 'guest workers' or migrant workers contributed significantly to the so-called German economic miracle. With the oil crisis of 1973 and rising unemployment, West Germany stopped agreements with other countries. Nevertheless, migration continued to rise due to various international crises, such as the military coup in Turkey in 1980. This increasing migration was polemicized by media outlets like *Der Spiegel*. With provocative covers and headlines like “Ghettos in Germany – One Million Turks” or “Borders Closed for Foreigners,” they reinforced the xenophobic tone of the political discourse.

As Franka Maubach succinctly put it, the period at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s can be understood as a “turning point in the history of racism in the Federal Republic,” during which “experiments were conducted with policies of immigration restriction, repatriation, or even expulsion.” For example, the 1982 Asylum Procedure Act drastically restricted the freedom of movement for asylum seekers and gradually excluded them from society. They were required to stay close to the immigration authorities, were provided with benefits in kind instead of money, and had to spend the initial phase of their asylum process in refugee camps. These legal changes were not primarily intended to organize migration. As many politicians at the time openly admitted, the restrictive laws were aimed at deterrence. The incumbent Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (SPD) reinforced this political course with the statement that Germany was not a country of immigration.

Lampertheim
and the Baseball Bat Years

“Three People Burned in Asylum Home” headlined the *Mannheimer Morgen* on February 2, 1992. On the night of January 31, 1992, a Sri Lankan family died as a result of arson. Their names remain unknown to this day. It was the seventh arson attack in a month. Due to “arson out of stupidity” (as prosecutor Georg Nauth described the act of arson), three youths were brought to court. Despite right-wing extremist activities around Lampertheim and several arson attacks before January 31, Nauth insisted in an interview that the act was a “foolish prank” and not the work of right-wing extremists.

According to their own statements, the three perpetrators, heavily intoxicated, wanted to visit an acquaintance at the refugee accommodation in Lampertheim at 3 a.m. When they could not find him, one of the perpetrators suggested setting the accommodation on fire as a ‘joke.’ That same evening, one of the perpetrators from Lampertheim had set fire to a piece of wallpaper in another refugee accommodation in Biblis (October 14, 1994) because a German resident of the accommodation, whom he knew, would not let him into his room. According to the forensic doctor, the perpetrators had blood alcohol levels between 2.5 and 5.9 per mille. “An unbelievable figure,” since the perpetrators were still able to drive a car and seemed to remember details of the crime clearly. Moreover, at a blood alcohol level of 2.0, the so-called stupor stage sets in, with memory and orientation disturbances, and at 3.5, there is an acute danger to life.

With “Dangerous Combination of Frustration and Alcohol,” the *Südhessen Morgen* described the end of the court proceedings on October 19, 1994. The perpetrators were sentenced to prison terms under juvenile criminal law. However, the act is still not considered a right-wing murder. In 1994, the southern Hessian district of Bergstraße officially requested the Sri Lankan embassy to cover the social welfare and funeral costs that the district had incurred for the deceased family. With meticulous precision, SPD district administrator Heinz Fraas calculated a sum of 24,017.26 DM. According to a *Spiegel* article, the outstanding amount was paid off through a savings account of the Sri Lankan family that was discovered after their death. This meant that the family had to posthumously pay for their life in Germany and their own death. Fraas justified his calculation as follows: "We are not responsible if criminals set fire to a house."

The arson attack in Lampertheim is part of the “Baseball Bat Years,” a decade of escalating right-wing violence. With the rise in migration at the end of the 1980s, the discourse on restricting asylum rights intensified. The CDU under Helmut Kohl railed against migrants with polemical slogans like “asylum abuse” and “bogus asylum seekers.” Media outlets like *Spiegel* and *Bild* reinforced the discourse through a policy of anonymizing migrants in both images and text. The rhetorical construction of refugees also played an essential role. While migrants from Eastern European countries were referred to as ‘refugees,’ the term ‘asylum seeker’ became established for refugees from non-European countries and became a key term in a xenophobic immigration debate. After a long dispute between the SPD and CDU, the so-called asylum compromise was implemented in 1992, drastically curtailing the basic right to asylum, which had been introduced after World War II as a response to the diaspora of minorities during the Third Reich.

Altena
and the Summer of Migration

On October 3, 2015, two men set fire to a house inhabited by Syrian refugees. A member of the volunteer fire department and his friend cut the cable for the fire alarm on the house wall, broke into the residential building through the basement, poured accelerants in the attic, and set it on fire. The two perpetrators justified the attack by stating their “anger at the arrival of refugees in the property.” The prosecutor spoke of a ‘personal’ rather than a xenophobic motive, which, in the context of the drastic increase in right-wing violence against refugees in August 2015, led to sharp criticism from politicians. Since 2015, political crimes motivated by “racist, xenophobic, and other inhumane motives” have been subject to harsher penalties. Additionally, two police officers were subjected to disciplinary proceedings for seemingly ‘overlooking’ the perpetrators' right-wing content in chat groups and on social media.

The Summer of Migration in 2015 and the following two years were marked by a dramatic increase in right-wing violence. The burning refugee accommodation in Weissach evoked painful memories of the pogroms in Rostock-Lichtenhagen or the murders in Solingen and Mölln. While even conservative CDU politicians advocated for greater solidarity with refugees, a new opposition was forming. With the founding of Pegida in October 2014 and the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has since been partially classified as a right-wing extremist party by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, migration-critical voices gained significant momentum. Old narratives of “asylum abuse” also made a comeback.

"From Incendiary Speeches
to Incendiary Devices"

The three cases of Duisburg, Lampertheim, and Altena illustrate that right-wing arson attacks, like other forms of right-wing violence, cannot be understood independently of the political, media, and societal climate. As Susanne Hennig-Welsow succinctly stated in 2015: “An arson attack on an inhabited house is an attempt to murder. The incendiary speeches are increasingly turning into incendiary devices.”

Here, fire becomes a weapon against an image of the “other,” continually fueled by politics, the media, and right-wing actors. While conservative politicians of the center made right-wing violence socially acceptable in the 1980s and 1990s, it was the right-wing opposition of AfD, Pegida, conservative politicians, and other splinter groups in 2015, 2016, and 2017 that motivated perpetrators from the middle of society to take the law into their own hands against refugees. In the three cases presented, it becomes clear that right-wing violence was repeatedly trivialized by third parties such as police officers, lawyers, politicians, and journalists. The extent of the underreporting of right-wing violence against refugees is evident from the official documentation of right-wing crimes by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). For example, between 1990 and 2020, BKA statistics documented 109 deaths from right-wing violence, while independent monitoring by the newspapers *Tagesspiegel* and *Zeit* recorded 187 cases, including four arson attacks not listed by the BKA that were highly likely committed by right-wing perpetrators. Furthermore, *taz* recorded 122 arson attacks on refugee accommodations in 2015. However, the official crime statistics only reported 76 arson attacks from the right. Another 18 fires in refugee accommodations were attributed to other motives by the BKA.

Arson File II
Fire as an Expression of Precarity
Arson from Within

Although not comparable to arson attacks, cases of arson committed by residents themselves do occur in Germany. It is important here to differentiate between the terms "arson attack" and "arson." While the former inherently carries the intent of an attack, typically perpetrated from the outside, the motivation behind arson from within is far more complex. The fire is not always directed solely at the arsonist but can also be interpreted as a form of protest. External arson attacks often receive intense media attention. On the other hand, the analysis of internal arson is often overlooked by media institutions and politicians. This vacuum was filled in 2015 and 2016, for example, by right-wing voices claiming that residents of refugee shelters themselves were the most frequent perpetrators of arson. However, an independent investigation by INURI disproved this claim – during this period, twice as many deliberate fires were recorded as being set by external perpetrators.

Beyond divergent interpretations, arson committed by residents can be understood in its political character. Two patterns of arson emerge when examining internal arson cases: on the one hand, fires in certain cases represent a form of resistance against the system of accommodation and precarity to which refugees are subjected; on the other hand, arson is often to be understood as an ‘act of desperation,’ highlighting the much larger problem of inadequate medical and psychological support structures provided by the state.

Kleinaitingen
or Arson as a Form of Migrant Resistance

On February 19, 2003, residents of the refugee shelter in Kleinaitingen set a fire to protest the spatial isolation of their accommodation. The small town lies 20 kilometers from Augsburg, flanked by a sea of agricultural fields and a federal highway. Due to the residence obligation, a permit from the immigration authorities is required to visit the neighboring city.

Thirty containers in the settlement burned down completely on February 19. The day before, there had already been a fire in the shelter, and a week earlier, almost all the residents refused their food packages and went on a hunger strike in protest.

Eight months later, in October 2003, two former residents were brought to trial. One of the defendants was sentenced to six years in prison for particularly severe arson.

The legal restrictions, such as the residence obligation introduced in 1982 (as part of the Asylum Procedure Act) or the work bans of 1980 and 1981, faced by people in the asylum process, repeatedly lead to protest. For example, in 1994, the 'Voice Refugee Forum' (originally 'Voice Africa Forum') was founded as one of several self-organized refugee groups that politically oppose the German camp system.

In early September 2012, refugees embarked on a protest march from Würzburg to Berlin to protest the residence obligation, deportations, and to demand the closure of refugee camps and better living conditions for refugees. This was preceded by the suicide of Mohammad R., who took his life in a Bavarian refugee shelter.

Further protests and hunger strikes followed in Munich, Hanover, Hermsdorf, and many other cities. Germany's migrant and post-migrant society is marked by a long history of political resistance against state repression of refugees, within which internal arson cases can also be situated. However, the means of arson is by no means limited to its explicit protest character. Arson is also often an expression of trauma and mental illness among the residents.

Münster
or the Chronic Undersupply of Psychological Support

“I wanted to destroy everything and burn myself as well."

The confession of a Lebanese refugee before the Münster Regional Court underscores the depth of his despair. On May 27, 2004, he had tried to commit suicide by setting a fire. The man had suffered from a severe psychosis for years, but it was only after the incident that the court decided to commit him to a psychiatric institution.

Many other cases of arson by residents tell similar stories. For example, on June 8, 2005, a resident of the refugee shelter in Weferlingen locked himself in his room and set a fire. He was hospitalized with smoke inhalation. The arson was assessed as an act of desperation. In January 2006, he was also committed to a psychiatric clinic after the incident.

Therefore, internal arson cases cannot be reduced solely to their individual motivations but must be understood in a broader context of systemic failure in the medical and psychological care of refugees. The Asylum Seekers' Benefits Act of 1993, introduced by then-Health Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU), represents the political origin of chronic undersupply.

Due to the law, asylum seekers and those with temporary suspension of deportation no longer have access to the regular health insurance system, as explained by the investigative collective Correctiv in a comprehensive report on the mental health of refugees. Treatments must be laboriously applied for. The exhausting, often lengthy, and opaque asylum process, as well as the spatial isolation in shelters and initial reception centers, can significantly contribute to the worsening of trauma.

Arson should therefore not be interpreted as a phenomenon depoliticized by the media but rather as an implicit or explicit political act of resistance against a system that marginalizes refugees through bureaucracy and legislation and deprives them of their agency.

Arson File III
Fire as a Structural Blaze
Fires Caused by Technical Defects

Apolda, Leipzig
and Fire as an 'Accident'

In the early hours of June 4, 2023, an 8-year-old Ukrainian boy suffocated in the flames of a refugee shelter in Apolda. While media outlets and politicians demanded a swift investigation, and a possible arson attack held the attention of politics and society, it became clear that the fire was caused by a technical defect. The deceased boy quickly disappeared from the headlines as suddenly as he had entered them.

On July 11, 2015, a fire broke out at the refugee shelter on Torgauer Street in Leipzig, also due to a technical defect. Fortunately, all residents were able to escape to safety in time. Originally, the two prefabricated buildings were scheduled for demolition in 2014 due to their dilapidated condition. However, in light of the increasing number of refugees in the summer of 2015, the city of Leipzig decided against it. The buildings were then hastily renovated, and the capacity was increased from 300 to 500 people. The renovation work dragged on until 2016, forcing the residents to continue living in the deplorable conditions, which sparked significant criticism. The sanitary facilities were in a catastrophic state, the rooms were infested with vermin, and the fire protection was inadequate.

Between 1980 and 2024, there were a total of 39 fires caused by technical defects, resulting in 4 deaths and 95 injuries in refugee shelters and residential buildings of migrant communities.

Technical defects are considered "accidents," meaning that a direct or linear causality to a specific perpetrator cannot be defined. Fires are caused by outdated technology, improper installations, or misuse. When fire investigators rule out an attack from either inside or outside, the media landscape often falls silent, losing interest in the incident.

As the devastating fire at Grenfell Tower in London painfully highlighted, a fire should not be seen as an "unfortunate accident, but as a predictable outcome of various forms of neglect, violence, and structural inequality." On June 14, 2017, a high-rise in North Kensington, London, caught fire in the early hours of the morning, killing 72 people. The rapid spread of the fire was due to the cladding on the building's exterior, which acted like an accelerant.

Although the dramatic scale of this event cannot be directly compared to incidents in Germany, it nevertheless illustrates that even 'unintentional' fires can be placed in a broader context of structural neglect. What role do municipal authorities play in repurposing special-purpose buildings as refugee shelters (typologies that were often not built for this purpose), or how does federal budgetary policy contribute to municipalities' struggles in providing for refugees?

A fire caused by a technical defect should therefore not be viewed solely as a tragic accident, but also understood in the context of the external circumstances of structural neglect, which are, in part, the result of policies and actions by the responsible authorities. The 'structural' fire also symbolizes the vulnerability and loss of autonomy.