Background

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

On 30 April 2026, Christoph Beck stepped down as a board member of degewo, Berlin’s largest state-owned housing company. He had taken the post on 15 November 2005 — while Frank Bielka was still on the board, while 62,800 Berlin apartments were recorded as containing asbestos-bearing floor tiles, and while not a single tenant in those apartments had been told. 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

Christoph Beck was appointed to degewo’s executive board on 15 November 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 1 April 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. The strategy stayed the same: remediate only on tenant turnover, 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 that, on average, contained roughly 500 kilograms of asbestos-bearing material — floor tiles, black adhesive, plaster, pipe insulation — measured by the hazardous-waste volume in a typical remediation (parliamentary record Drs. 18/20 913). Not one of them had been told. 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.

A documented case in central Berlin shows what those announcements were worth in practice: degewo issued a written renovation permit to a tenant for an apartment whose asbestos contamination it knew about. degewo’s own expert report subsequently confirmed: 99 percent asbestos in the adhesive.

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 further 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, three months past the contractual end.

What remains: 23,883 apartments

According to parliamentary record Drs. 19/25 368 (reference date 31 December 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 continues to happen on tenant turnover — not through a comprehensive disclosure strategy.

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 same moment: over 14,000 degewo apartments with asbestos-bearing floor tiles, no systematic tenant disclosure. Remediation strategy: wait for the tenant to leave.

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 1 May 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 15 November 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 the perpetrator of a crime that ended in a conviction. He is one of several decision-makers under whose responsibility thousands of people lived in contaminated apartments — and still do. 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.

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