In April 2025 the taz shifted the focus. Tilman Baumgärtel still opens with the scene on Friedrichstraße, but his piece is no longer primarily about Henry Lindemeier. It is about the building he stands outside.
His starting point is a detail that reveals how the institution responds to the protest. As soon as Lindemeier appears, the doorman places two signs on the pavement warning of a provocation, complete with a stylised figure holding a flag. Baumgärtel opens by calling it a peculiar honour to be given your own street sign by the representatives of a rogue state.
The core of the text is a contradiction. The Russian House opened in East Berlin in 1984 and is operated by the Russian agency Rossotrudnichestvo, which has been on the EU sanctions list since July 2022. Operations continue nonetheless. The taz notes that the legal routes to closure are not clear-cut, and sets against this the fact that Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic and Sweden have already closed comparable institutions.
At the same time the article documents how the House deploys the instruments of the rule of law against the protest: complaints and criminal charges alleging noise nuisance, harassment of passers-by, filming children. The evidence submitted included footage from surveillance cameras trained on the public pavement, which is not permitted. After four physical attacks, the taz reports, Lindemeier now wears a stab vest and carries a whistle.
Lindemeier describes his own motive to the paper as working against forgetting: he wants, he says, to push back against suppression.