Night-blue clad figures roam here in groups, holding people down, rummaging through their belongings in the middle of the street. When people flee from them, they run after them, push them against a house wall, and don’t let them go until they have what they want.
Sometimes they kidnap people, who then only reappear after hours.
Sometimes they take their mobile phones, sometimes their money, sometimes both.
It also happens that people disappear, just like that. Yesterday they were still sitting on the stairs, talking to a friend, like many days before. Today they are no longer there, nor do they reappear.

Many people who live, work or meet here in St. Pauli-Süd wonder if it will stay like this forever. They wish the neighbourhood were safer, or at least less dangerous.

The researchers of the renowned “Gute-Allianzen-Institut” have been studying this state of affairs for years. They have scanned the whole of St. Pauli-Süd with highly sensitive danger detectors, conducted interviews and found that the less people care about each other, the more dangerous individual areas are.

And now the sensation! Earlier this year, the researchers noticed an anomaly in the danger spectrum. The pointer of the danger detector trembled only slightly at one point. It didn’t swing out, as it usually does everywhere.

“We were very surprised,” says the head of the research project, Dr Mary Stevenson. “We checked the spot carefully. It was only a few square metres, but here the sun was shining warmer, the air was better and people walking by were smiling. Unfortunately, the phenomenon disappeared after about two hours.”

The researchers examined this area of the neighbourhood particularly thoroughly in the following weeks. They noticed that the anomaly always seemed to occur on the first Friday of the month, in the evening at six, and disappear again around eight o’clock in the evening.

“We call the phenomenon a ‘non-danger-zone’,” says Dr Stevenson. “It still seems to be very unstable, but there is hope that it will increase and at some point it may become permanent.

We also have evidence that it is occurring in other places in the district. We don’t have enough danger detectors and also too few staff to investigate it everywhere at the same time. That’s why we are preparing a large study in which we want to involve the residents of St. Pauli-Süd.”

The research institute is calling on everyone who lives in St. Pauli-Süd or spends a lot of time here to participate in the study. Keep your eyes open! Make a note of your experiences when you find places in the neighbourhood that somehow feel different and where you like to spend time.

Dr Stevenson points out, however, that some people don’t do as well with the “non-danger-zone” as others.

“The ‘non-danger-zone’ makes them uncomfortable” says Dr Stevenson. “They have an unexplained uncomfortable itch there. Anyone who feels this way should seek urgent counselling. He or she may be in the wrong profession, or may have overdosed on horror stories since childhood and now believes that “dangerous places” are normal and life is only manageable through a great deal of control. Changing such beliefs is hard. But there are therapies.”

All those who believe that things can be different and who want to take part in the large study on the “non-danger-zone” should look out for places in the neighbourhood, especially on the first Friday of the month in the early evening, where good-humoured people are and where they themselves feel safer.

The research institute is accepting tips on ungefaehrlicherort@systemli.org