A publicly funded temporary pool outside Berlin’s Volksbühne theater will restrict access to Black communities for six hours on Aug. 14, prompting criticism over race-based admission at a project promoted as an open public gathering place.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
A taxpayer-supported pop-up swimming pool outside Berlin’s Volksbühne theater is facing criticism after organizers designated a six-hour period on Friday, Aug. 14, exclusively for members of Black communities, temporarily excluding the general public from the facility.
The temporary outdoor pool was introduced as a free, non-commercial summer gathering place intended to provide easy public access at a time when Berlin is facing shortages of available swimming facilities. The €300,000 project does not require identity checks for ordinary admission, although visitors must compete for reservations through an online system.
Its Aug. 14 programming, however, establishes a different admission policy between noon and 6 p.m.
“During this period, the public bath is exclusively open to Black communities,” the official program states.
According to Berliner Zeitung, organizers additionally asked visitors to respect “this collective self-designation and the associated spaces.”
The restricted-access event is being conducted with Each One Teach One, or EOTO, a publicly funded nongovernmental organization that provides social and cultural programming for Black people.
EOTO receives financial support from both Germany’s federal government and the state of Berlin. That public funding, combined with the use of a publicly subsidized swimming facility, has intensified criticism from opponents who argue that excluding people based on race conflicts with the project’s original presentation as an inclusive urban gathering place.
When the pool was introduced, organizers promoted it as an open “summer invitation” and an alternative to the commercialization of urban public space. Critics now contend that setting aside the facility exclusively for one racial community, even temporarily, is inconsistent with that stated purpose.
Supporters of the policy describe the designated period as a “safe space” for Black communities and argue that people who experience systemic racism should have opportunities to gather without exposure to the discrimination they say they encounter elsewhere.
The pool is the first major project associated with incoming artistic director Matthias Lilienthal and has also been presented as a response to shortages affecting Berlin’s traditional swimming facilities.
Lilienthal told German broadcaster ZDF: “Half of the indoor and outdoor swimming pools are closed, so we thought we were helping the Governing Mayor Kai Wegner.”
Berlin’s swimming facilities have faced overcrowding and operational problems as the city’s population has increased. Some pools have also experienced serious incidents involving disorder and violence. One previously reported case involved a Berlin pool that closed after employees called out sick, citing severe workplace stress amid repeated misconduct and assaults.
The Volksbühne itself receives more than €20 million annually in public subsidies. The temporary pool is 25 meters long and 1.30 meters deep and can accommodate no more than 46 swimmers at one time.
Organizers have budgeted the project around an anticipated 20,000 visitors during the swimming season.
The controversy is not the first in Germany involving publicly funded institutions or organizations that have offered programs restricted by race or ethnicity.
Earlier this year, the right-wing Alternative for Germany, or AfD, pledged to cut public funding for left-wing activist organizations after reports that a Berlin group operating a coworking café that excluded white people had received more than €662,000 in taxpayer support.
A similar dispute occurred in Dortmund in August 2023, when a museum of industrial heritage limited access to its “That’s Colonial” exhibition on Saturdays between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. to people identified as “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.”
The Zollern Colliery museum defended the arrangement as a “safer space” intended to allow visitors of color to experience the exhibition without what organizers described as additional discrimination.
The exclusive period was “an offer for BIPoC and black people to be able to withdraw and exchange ideas openly,” according to the museum. “For BIPoC, such safe spaces are rarely found in everyday life or in museum rooms.”
Another dispute emerged in May 2025 at the German Evangelical Church’s Church Congress in Hanover, where a workshop titled “Become Courage and Strong” was limited to Black, Indigenous and children of color.
“This offer is aimed exclusively at Black, Indigenous, and children of color,” the event’s program stated.
The restriction drew accusations of racial discrimination because white children were not permitted to participate, including ethnic Germans and other Europeans whose families are indigenous to Europe.
In another taxpayer-funded initiative, the German organization Schwarze Schafe, or “Black Sheep,” offered a six-month seminar earlier this year specifically for white participants to examine what the program described as their privileges.
The organization identifies itself as a “post-migrant education initiative,” receives public funding and operates a reporting center addressing anti-Muslim racism.
The seminar, based on concepts associated with “Critical Whiteness,” was scheduled to run from March through September, with participants expected to pay as much as €2,290.
The Aug. 14 pool event has renewed the broader argument over whether publicly financed institutions should be permitted to establish programming that excludes people based explicitly on race.
Supporters characterize such programs as limited spaces intended for communities they say experience discrimination, while critics argue that race-based exclusion remains discriminatory regardless of the stated purpose or which racial group is excluded.
At the Volksbühne pool, that dispute will become concrete Friday when ordinary public admission is suspended for six hours and access is reserved exclusively for Black communities.
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