Background

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

On April 30, 2026, Christoph Beck left the executive board 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 in which the contamination was already on record: 14,400 apartments in the portfolio had asbestos-bearing floors. The Senate’s answer to parliamentary inquiry 14/219, signed on April 1, 2000 by then State Secretary Frank Bielka (simultaneously Chairman of degewo’s Supervisory Board, and from 2003 a degewo board member himself), had documented that figure publicly — and recorded, in so many words: “no tenant information takes place.”

Beck inherited that decision. He did not reverse it: there was no systematic, verifiable disclosure to existing tenants under him either. 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. 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 — in civil proceedings against a tenant who had applied for legal aid to sue degewo.

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 through the end of 2025. Active public debate and parliamentary inquiries changed nothing — nor did the criminal complaint filed a year later. The supervisory board saw no reason to change leadership. Beck stayed until April 2026, four months past the end date agreed in 2020.

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. For the first time, degewo reports 16,967 suspected cases alongside 6,916 confirmed ones — earlier tallies listed confirmed cases only. Apart from a pilot remediation in Schlangenbader Straße, remediation still happens on tenant turnover — and there is no systematic information of sitting tenants.

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: on record since 2000, at least 14,400 degewo apartments with asbestos-bearing floor tiles, no systematic tenant disclosure. Remediation did not begin until 2012/2013 — following a requirement by the Berlin occupational safety authority (LAGetSi), and as a rule only 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. From January 2017 to May 2026, according to commercial-register announcements documented by Northdata, he also held signing authority (Prokura) at degewo Technische Dienste GmbH (dTD) — the subsidiary that has carried out the group’s in-house asbestos remediation since 2022; his official board biography does not list this position. His board portfolio today covers financing, controlling and procurement — the money every remediation is paid from. 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 — an external hire, previously with Vonovia SE and BUWOG. His portfolio includes portfolio management and, explicitly, degewo Technische Dienste GmbH: the asbestos stock and the remediation subsidiary both sit with him. There is no publicly documented statement from him on how he intends to handle either. Two new faces — one recruited from outside, one shaped inside the group — and 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 put on record in 2000 in the Senate answer signed by Frank Bielka, carried on from 2003 by Bielka himself on degewo’s board and by Christoph Beck — and to this day no statute expressly prohibits it. In tenancy law, withholding the information has counted as a breach of duty since 1996 (Berlin Regional Court, 18 S 140/16); a statutory duty to inform tenants still does not exist. The revised Gefahrstoffverordnung (Hazardous Substances Ordinance, 2024/2025) changed none of this: it introduced neither an investigation obligation for building owners nor a duty to inform tenants about known asbestos. France and Poland have such obligations; Germany does not. For degewo, investigation was never the question — it knew, on record since 2000. What is still missing is the duty to pass that knowledge on to the people living there.

Christoph Beck was never charged; the criminal investigation into the case was conducted against persons unknown and discontinued. 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. More on the discontinued investigation. There has been no systematic civil-law reckoning.

Christoph Beck leaves the company. The problem stays.

Updated: August 2026 — Added Maack's dTD signing authority (per Northdata: Jan 2017 – May 2026), corrected "two former insiders" (Atzert is an external hire), and specified both portfolios (Atzert: asbestos stock and dTD; Maack: financing, controlling, procurement). Previously: precision pass mirroring the German audit.

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