[1][2] Sybille Volkholz was born at Dramburg (as it was known before the frontier changes mandated in 1945), a small manufacturing and market town in Pomerania, positioned at the edge of the marshy flatlands east of Stettin.

That was followed by a three year stint between 1967 and 1970 as a research assistant at the (subsequently expanded and in 1971 rebranded) Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, while studying for a career in the teaching profession.

The so-called Clearing of the Mainzer Street involved ten water canon trucks, helicopters, tear gas, guns and around 3,000 policemen.

It turned out that Erich Pätzold, the SPD senator whose portfolio covered the issue of squatter clearance, had neither alerted his three Green Party ministerial colleagues to his plans nor involved them in discussions about it once the exercise was under way.

The three Green senators were persuaded not to pursue their motion of no-confidence, but Sybille Volkholz, along with her like-minded colleagues Michaele Schreyer and Anne Klein, did resign.

[8] The Momper administration lost their majority: the political crisis resulting was less acute than might be thought, since new elections had already been scheduled to take place the next month.

To some extent trends in what was West Berlin before 1990 have indeed moved in this direction, not on the basis of some great eureka moment on the part of government, but because ideas championed by Volkholz have become increasingly mainstream.

Between 2000 and 2004 Volkholz headed up the Education Commission of the Heinrich Böll Foundation and also led the “Schools-Businesses partnership” of the Berlin Chamber of Commerce.

From 2005 till 2015 she teamed up with the VBKI (‘’Association of Berlin Businesspeople and Industrialists’’) to organise a “Citizens’ Education Network” (subsequently renamed “Berlin Reading Sponsorship”) which organises volunteers to help promote and teach reading at primary and secondary schools to children in need of extra encouragement and engagement to master these vital skills.