UJZ Korn Unabhängiges Jugendzentrum Kornstraße
Radical youth center and organizing hub in Hanover, Germany since 1972
UJZ Kornstrasse has operated as an autonomous radical space in Hannover, Germany, since 1972 — one of the longest-running independent youth centers in the country. Founded by social scientists and movement organizers from the extra-parliamentary left, the Korn (as it’s known locally) began as an action center committed to supporting unemployed and politically active young people. From the start, it operated under community control, refusing to subordinate its direction to city funding conditions, even after that funding was eventually cut in 1978.
Over the decades, the space has been a node for nearly every major social movement in the region. It was the center of Hanover’s anti-nuclear movement in the late 1970s, a gathering point for the squatters’ movement in the early 1980s, and a key site of organized anti-fascist resistance when neo-fascist attacks on the space intensified throughout that decade. When the state tried to shut it down through funding cuts, noise ordinance enforcement, and criminal prosecution of staff, the community responded by buying the building outright through a cooperative real estate structure.
The Korn runs workshops, a pub, concerts, and political events. It has housed a print collective, a moving and cleanout collective, anti-repression support for young offenders, and youth housing. After a major renovation completed in 1991, the space operates with updated facilities while maintaining the same political commitments that have defined it since the beginning.
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