Why are there no large pro-Palestine protests at German universities like the protests we see in American universities?

Honestly the legal situation here is pretty different. Germany has strict laws against anything deemed antisemitic or that could be seen as supporting Hamas, so protests have to be super careful with wording and symbols. Plus universities here are generally less political than in the US, they're more about studying than activism.

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the protests here are happening just not on campus. last week there was a big one at neptunbrunnen in mitte, maybe 3000 people. berlin's student unions actually organized a few teach-ins at fu and hu but they're careful about the wording because of the bds resolution and the whole staatsraeson thing. plus the police here shut down anything that looks like it might get loud pretty fast, unlike paris where they let things go for a while before stepping in

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one thing people miss is that german universities don't have the same kind of campus life as american ones. there's no greek life, no big sports culture, and most students commute or live off campus so there's no central "campus square" to gather in. protests here happen on the streets, not at the uni gates. also, the student unions (asta) are already pretty politicized and do their own events, but they're usually small and don't get national attention

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Worth noting that Berlin street names have official umlaut and ß rules that trip people up, so a sign showing "Strasse" versus "Straße" is not actually a spelling error, just an older transcription. Same with "ue" versus "ü" (e.g. "Kantstrasse" vs "Kantstraße"), both are considered valid renderings and you'll see the ß version on the blue Schilder and the ss version on older plaques or in databases that predate Unicode. If the difference you're seeing is between those two forms, there's nothing to fix and both are technically correct.

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if the signs u mean are the old enamel ones on the house facades those are often protected as Baudenkmal so nobody's allowed to correct them even if the spelling is outdated. the binding version is whatever is in the Berliner Strassenverzeichnis plus the entry in the Liegenschaftskataster, so if u tell me the street i can point u to the right Bezirksamt Mitte or Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf page. tbh the merged district thing is real but the facade signs are a separate story, theyre basically museum pieces at this point

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honestly thats super common in Charlottenburg, the district offices were merged from older Bezirke and nobody ever fixed all the Schilder. if its a real street you can check the official strassenverzeichnis on berlin.de, that list is what the Burgeramt actually goes by. which street is it? some of the Kaiserdamm / Kantstrasse signs are notorious for this.

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