Background

Christoph Beck’s Twenty Years at degewo — What Changed, and What Didn’t

On April 30, 2026, Christoph Beck stepped down as a board member of degewo, Berlin’s largest state-owned housing company. He had taken the post on November 15, 2005 — while Frank Bielka was still on the board, while 62,800 apartments owned by state housing companies were recorded as containing asbestos-bearing floor tiles (14,400 of them at degewo), and no verifiable tenant disclosure had taken place. Twenty years later, 23,883 apartments in degewo’s portfolio still carry confirmed or suspected asbestos contamination. The question of responsibility has not changed.

What Beck inherited — and what he continued

Christoph Beck was appointed to degewo’s executive board on November 15, 2005. He entered a company whose leadership had known, in writing, for five years: more than 14,000 apartments in the portfolio contained asbestos-bearing floors. Parliamentary inquiry 14/219, signed on April 1, 2000 by then State Secretary Frank Bielka (and, until 2002, simultaneously Chairman of degewo’s Supervisory Board), had documented those numbers publicly — and at the same time decided: no systematic tenant disclosure.

Beck inherited that decision. He did not reverse it: no proactive disclosure to the existing tenancy. When Beck took office in 2005, the asbestos problem in degewo’s apartments was not a secret inside the company — it was simply not a topic outside it.

From 2005 to 2014, Beck and Bielka shared the executive board. They shared more than the office. In 2011, mid-tenure, the two co-published the book “Verantwortung für die Stadt” (“Responsibility for the City”). The title sounds programmatic. At the same time, thousands of tenants in degewo’s own buildings were living in apartments with asbestos-bearing materials — floor tiles, black adhesive, plaster, pipe insulation. Where the figures exist, they are striking: the Senate response Drs. 18/20 913 (23 September 2019) documents one specific remediation — three degewo properties in Berlin’s Wedding district, 151 apartments in total — that produced on average roughly 500 kilograms of hazardous waste per unit. Across the wider degewo portfolio, comparable per-apartment figures have never been published. The tenants in those 151 apartments were not informed before the work began. The book is still on sale. No comprehensive tenant information programme had taken place — no notice at move-in, no posting in the building, no delivery proof for the letters degewo later claimed to have sent. What did exist: written renovation permits for asbestos-contaminated apartments.

Twenty years on the job

It would be inaccurate to say nothing changed under Beck. In 2012, degewo published an information brochure that referenced possible asbestos exposure. In 2013, the company sent letters to tenants in affected apartments. That sounds like progress.

But in the same period, degewo issued a written renovation permit, in a documented case in central Berlin, to a tenant in February 2012 to renovate an apartment whose asbestos contamination was recorded in its own system — a permit that should never have been issued for an asbestos apartment. degewo’s own commissioned assessor later described the black adhesive as asbestos-bearing “with 99 percent certainty”; an independent laboratory report confirmed the asbestos (chrysotile) beyond doubt.

In 2019, under Beck’s executive responsibility, degewo retained EKSK — a leading German criminal defence and crisis law firm — against a tenant who had filed for legal aid. The criminal investigation was discontinued in 2021.

In January 2020, the public broadcaster ARD’s investigative programme Kontraste covered the case. degewo’s press spokesman Lichtenthäler explained on camera that not informing tenants about asbestos was “a question of balance” — and that he found it “sufficient” to simply tell them not to disturb the floor. Christoph Beck was on the executive board at that time.

In May 2020, the supervisory board extended Beck’s contract by a good five years — through the end of 2025. Active public debate, parliamentary inquiries, a criminal complaint: the supervisory board saw no reason to change leadership. Beck stayed until April 2026, four months past the contractual end.

What remains: 23,883 apartments

According to parliamentary record Drs. 19/25 368 (reference date December 31, 2025), degewo still has 23,883 apartments with confirmed or suspected asbestos contamination in its portfolio. The new counting method captures the scale more accurately than earlier tallies. Remediation still happens only on tenant turnover — and sitting tenants are not proactively informed.

The question that has shaped the Berlin asbestos story since 1993 remains open: How many tenants, over all these years, have lived on asbestos-contaminated floors — drilled, sanded, renovated — without knowing? degewo has never provided an answer. Not under Christoph Beck either.

The book, the title, the reality: “Verantwortung für die Stadt: Beiträge für ein neues Miteinander” (Frank Bielka & Christoph Beck, 2011). At the time: over 14,000 degewo apartments with asbestos-bearing floor tiles, no systematic tenant disclosure. Remediation did not begin until 2012 — and then only quietly, on tenant turnover.

The successor: another insider

degewo’s supervisory board has appointed Kai-Marten Maack as Beck’s successor. The announcement came in December 2025; Maack takes office on May 1, 2026. Maack is not an external hire: he has worked inside the degewo group since 2000, was Managing Director of degewo subsidiary gewobe from 2008, joined degewo AG in 2014, and has been responsible for acquisitions and procurement since 2015. How he intends to handle the open remediation backlog — 23,883 apartments — is not publicly known. The apartments are his inheritance.

In parallel, Pascal Atzert has held a seat on degewo’s executive board since November 15, 2025. His position on asbestos remediation is not publicly documented either. Two new faces, two former insiders, no public commitment to a different course.

A structural problem, not a personal one

Beck’s departure changes nothing about what makes the Berlin asbestos story a systemic failure. The decision not to inform tenants was signed by Frank Bielka in 2000, carried on by Christoph Beck, and — under current law — remains not forbidden. The revised Gefahrstoffverordnung (Hazardous Substances Ordinance) of December 2025 did not introduce an investigation obligation for building owners. France and Poland have such obligations; Germany does not. If you do not look, you do not find. If you do not find, you do not have to remediate.

Beck is not a convicted criminal. He is one of several decision-makers under whose responsibility thousands of people lived, and still live, in contaminated apartments — uninformed, some of them unknowingly putting themselves at risk as they drilled and renovated. The criminal investigation associated with the case was discontinued. Civil claims have occasionally succeeded but never systematically.

Christoph Beck leaves the company. The problem stays.

Updated: June 2026 — Fact correction: remediation-on-tenant-turnover strategy correctly dated (from the 2012 LAGetSi requirement / degewo practice 2013, not 2005/2011); minor date and scope fixes.

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