Lübeck becomes the third German city that changes its language to "gender-neutral"

The most progressive German states in the process of "gendermainstreaming" as it's called in German are the two South-Western states of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria. Both made it "optional" for their public servants to use the new language. While the first has a Green Party Prime Minister and implemented gender-neutral expressions already years ago, the latter - who is dominated by conservative governments since World War two - just recently caught up with its neighbor and also gave out recommendations for the optional use of gender-neutral expressions.

First Hannover, then Hamburg and now innovative Lübeck

Still, there are several cities, who decided on their own to give in to accusations of furthering "male hegemony" and made gender-neutral expressions mandatory within their realm. In their official language for documents and speeches, they abolished both expressions with the two classic pronouns as well as the usual practice in the German language to use male attributes when both men, women and everything in between are meant.

The first city which decided to switch was Hannover, hometown of EU-Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Hannover was soon followed by Hamburg, which is institutionally both a city and its own state. It's only the city that made the changes by the way, but that's probably just a technicality.

With the beginning of the year 2020, a third city added itself to the list of gender-neutral locations in Germany. It's Lübeck. A city, which until now was known for having been a major member of the Hanse League, for its delicious pastry, for its Holstentor (see the title image) and for the fact that everything else but the Holstentor got completely destroyed in World War 2 in one of the first and most devastating allied bomber attacks on Germany.

Lübeck might soon become known for another special attribute as its political leadership is currently in the process of changing the language of all correspondence, brochures, flyers, websites, forms and so on to a more inclusive "administrational language". But that is not all. They also want to revolutionize the modus of gender-neutral expressions in the German language.

So far, this new gendermainstreamed German language is not more than a patchwork of "recommendations" created by feminist institutions at different universities like the GenderKompetenzZentrum at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Many criticize these recommendations for being inconsistent and impossible to read because of too many long periphrases and notorious "gender-stars" to mark inclusivity.

In Lübeck though, they appear to have found the golden key to a readable German gender-neutral language. Instead of a star (*) in between words like "Verbrecher*innen", the city will from now on use a colon as in "Verbrecher:innen" to mark its inclusivity. They argue, that this will fix the existing problems with the German gender language.

When left-wing governments spent other people's money

As most German cities with at least 100,000 citizens, Hannover, Hamburg and Lübeck have city councils with a strong green/left majority. According to Wikipedia, 26 of Lübecks 49 members of the city council belong to a fraction on the left side of the political spectrum. With this kind of majority, it wasn't too difficult for Lübeck's white male major Jan Lindau (a Social Democrat) to implement the new gender-netural language and make it mandatory for everyone.

The bill for changing everything as well as the costs of probably enough hick-ups while reading and writing in the new language will of course be footed by the tax-payers among Lübeck's 218,000 citizens.

For 2020, Lübeck is planning with a budget of about 875 Million Euro including a deficit of 19 Million Euro, as Die Welt reports. This notably during a zero interest rate regime by the European Central Bank, which means that Lübeck probably doesn't have to pay any interest on its overall debt of 1.227 Billion Euro.

It remains unknown how much the changes of the language for all official materials will cost. But the comparison to other institutions gendermainstreaming their language shows what kind of costly enterprise "gender equality" can be.

For example three years ago, Berlin's "Studentenwerk" which is responsible for all university related services for students in Brelin, renamed itself into "Studierendenwerk". That cost 800,000 Euro for the roughly 100,000 students who attend one of the public higher education facilities in Germany's capital. Lübeck has twice as many citizens and provides multiple times as many services to its citizens than Berlin's higher education system.

This means, there is a good chance that Lübeck's new debt this year is caused to a significant degree by its attempt to be gender-equal. At least on paper.