Not All That Glitters Is Gold: Socially Disadvantaged People in Munich

Munich is regarded as one of the wealthiest cities in Germany, with the highest rent index in the country. Yet even here, not all that glitters is gold, because social disadvantage is a lived reality in the outlying districts, for example in Feldmoching-Hasenbergl. Munich is not only a global metropolis, but also a city of superlatives: shopping opportunities are better, apartments are larger, employment opportunities more diverse, incomes higher, and so on.

If we look at the facts, they appear to support these claims: in the state capital, 776,405 people are in employment subject to social insurance contributions (2014), approximately 837,000 apartments are available to the roughly 1.6 million inhabitants (2024), and the City of Munich generated a gross domestic product (GDP) of an impressive 83.461 billion euros in 2012. At first glance, all of this sounds positive, yet the reality is unfortunately quite different, as the private detectives of Kurtz Investigations Munich repeatedly observe during their assignments.

Munich Is Not Rich – It Only Appears So

While glamour and high society on the one hand create an image of cheerful contentment, on the other there is a struggle for daily survival. The middle class is shrinking, and the gap between rich and poor continues to widen. Contrary to popular opinion, neither reunification nor the financial crisis, nor the current intake of refugees, is responsible for this development; rather, it is the changes in employment relationships. Until around 15 years ago, collectively agreed, permanent full-time employment was the norm. Today, however, the proportion of employees working in collectively agreed enterprises has fallen from 70 per cent to 57 per cent (2014). New employment models such as temporary agency work, mini-jobs and fixed-term contracts have replaced traditional forms of employment. Minimal, yet insufficient, countermeasures for the lower wage brackets have been introduced in many professions through the statutory minimum wages prescribed since 01 January 2015.

In addition to the social consequences, this has resulted in an increase in payment defaults, which in turn has led to Kurtz Detective Agency Munich being increasingly commissioned with debtor investigations. From an economic perspective, this development is of course a positive one for our Munich private detectives. Nevertheless, it is also frustrating for us when we are able to present a positive investigation result, yet the enforcement of our clients’ claims or those of their respective legal representatives still fails because the debtor has no attachable assets.