Three months in prison: on challenges of anti-coal protest in East Germany

1 Apr

In Cottbus, Germany, protests against coal are clashing with a lack of prospects for post-coal employment. However, a group of climate activists is sure that blocking coal power plants will still work to achieve their goal of climate protection.

It's about 4 a.m. on a chilly morning on September 19th, 2022, when Ava, Ralph (names changed), and about 40 other activists set out together from a secret starting point in downtown Cottbus toward the Jänschwalde power plant. Ava and Ralph are excited, as they are up to something that, in the eyes of some, is simply a crime. But they are also sure that what they are up to is legitimate and important. They have a plan.

A few hours later, no more coal is running on the conveyor belts between the Jänschwalde open pit mine and the power plant. Some activists have chained themselves to two conveyor belts right by the power plant. Two other groups, one including Ava and her friends, are blocking the access tracks where trains normally carry coal. There, two activists have chained themselves to a bright yellow barrel, bearing the words "Extended operating times? UnBARRELbal."

With this protest, the group demands the immediate shutdown of the Jänschwalde coal-fired power plant in Lusatia. The Cottbus Administrative Court had ruled in the summer of 2022 that the open pit mine must cease operations - the reason given was the threat it posed to the drinking water supply; the operating company Leag had repeatedly pumped out more water than authorised for the open pit mine. But in the wake of the energy policy debates surrounding the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, an appeal by Leag against the administrative court's decision was upheld in early May 2022. "Instead of pushing forward with the expansion of renewable energies as quickly as possible and reducing our energy consumption, the power plant continues to hang on the grid," the activists criticised.

Some activists had also occupied the tracks to the power plant. © Philipp Czampiel

According to local residents in Cottbus, however, the situation is not as black and white as it is depicted by the activists. Maria (name changed), who runs a hair salon in downtown Cottbus, says that it is very hard for people in the region to be faced with the immediate shutdown of the power plant. “There is simply no perspective on what comes after coal”, she explains. While she understands the need for climate action, she feels wary about the effectiveness of such a protest like blocking the power plant, as she believes it is unfair that climate activists are simply calling for the power plant to be shut down without a clear perspective of what comes after. “It’s not that simple”, she says.

Maria (name changed) runs a hair salon in downtown Cottbus, near the Leag Central. © Philipp Czampiel

When Ava and Ralph are taken away from the access tracks a few hours later, they have no idea that Brandenburg's Interior Minister Michael Stübgen of the CDU, the German conservative party, will call them "criminals". The "climate extremists" must be "put out of business," he will say and demand "severe penalties." Nor can they know that they will be the only two from their group to spend three months in pre-trial detention behind bars. The state will charge them with trespassing and disrupting public operations.

The landscape at “Cottbuser Ostsee” is still being flooded as a former open-cast mine. © Philipp Czampiel

When it comes to climate protection, many in Germany have two hearts beating in their chest. According to a survey by two major German news outlets 82% of Germans are in favour of more climate protection.3 At the same time, however, Germans are dissatisfied with the kind of protests that climate activists conduct. The same survey shows that 40% of respondents consider the protests conducted by the “Last Generation”, a group that has made headlines recently by their activists glueing themselves to streets and calling for a federal speed limit on highways, to be excessive. As a result, the indignation of politicians and journalists only seems to increase, instead of leading to more public debates about climate protection. Often the argument against radical climate activism seems to be that it is simply too extreme. Can a protest like Ava and Ralph's in Cottbus have any effect at all if it primarily triggers feelings of outrage?

Christopher Neumann, a local politician from “Die Linke”, the left party in Cottbus, is not sure. He thinks the occupation of power plants and open-pit mining sites is hitting the wrong target audience. Responding to an email inquiry from TEMA, Neumann explained that: "In a democratic society, we have to win people over - also locally - for climate protection. Whether the forms of protest chosen so far are helpful for this, I think, is questionable in response to a request from TEMA via email.

Their protest was not intended to make the activists popular at all, Ava replied to Neumann’s criticism on the phone a few months after she was released from prison. Her voice sounds calm, the only time she raises her voice is when she talks about her stay in prison. The time in prison was hard, she said. There, she witnessed, according to her own words, the “injustice of the state”. For example, she watched as her fellow inmates repeatedly missed out on important events in the outside world, such as missing the funerals of their loved ones.

In their group's so-called "theory of change," it wasn't meant to be, Ava’s friend Ralph says on the phone, that all actions had to be liked by everyone. "The fact that we ended up in jail was unpleasant, but also not surprising", he says.

Advertising poster for the new “Cottbuser Ostsee” © Philipp Czampiel

What do activists mean when they talk about the "theory of change"? What remains visible from protests can metaphorically be called the tip of the iceberg: The power plant blockade, the highway rappelling protest, and the traffic jam protests. But often, Ava and Ralph explain, that is not the primary goal of the protest at all. The protest, they say, is much more a means to an end; the long-term goal is climate protection and the German government's compliance with the Paris Climate Agreement. The Theory of Change model is one that was originally applied in an institutional context - as an approach that originated in the U.S. and was developed there in the context of political institutions. Now, however, the model is also being implemented in a low-level context - Ava and Ralph explain.

The two had thought long and hard beforehand about whether they wanted to take part in this blockade protest, knowing full well what to expect. "In the climate movement, everyone has to find the role that suits them. What suited us best at that moment was to block this power plant. We are young, we still have the energy," Ava says. "What we have achieved concretely is to get attention. We managed to open a space where we could talk about the climate crisis," adds Ralph. "We manage to get young people to see this protest and think to themselves: there are people who are taking action for our planet, maybe I can do the same."

Cottbus is a city in eastern Germany with around 98,000 inhabitants. © Philipp Czampiel

According to Ava and Ralph, the division of labour in the climate movement is the critical key to long-term success. Some protests are there to attract attention, not to be popular, while other NGOs, such as BUND (Friends of the Earth) in the case of Cottbus , are doing important research work on the Jänschwalde power plant. In case of doubt, BUND is also the organisation that can negotiate with politicians, Ava and Ralph said. "Ultimately, we activists are there to build up the pressure." The NGOs, in turn, have another strength that the activists do not have: political legitimacy.

Protest researcher Simon Teune of the Institute for Protest and Movement Research supports Ava and Ralph's theory of change. "Protests disrupt, irritate, and sometimes annoy," the sociologist emphasises: "The point is not to please everyone, but to put a finger on the wound." Protests that disturb "don't work on their own, but in combination with commitment in other places, educational work, large demonstrations, proposals of alternatives."

Freight wagons of the German electricity company "Leag". © Philipp Czampiel

Even their time in prison also became more and more part of their strategic calculus, the longer it lasted. "It ended up being three more months of coverage of our protest," Ava explains with an almost analytical tone in her voice. She says the jail stay helped her press work because it underscored how far people were willing to go. Ava and Ralph had to be remanded in custody because, unlike the other 17 activists arrested, they had decided to withhold their personal details - Leag had threatened to charge the activists for the total damage of 3.2 million euros, a fate Ava and Ralph wanted to escape in this way.

Ava, Ralph and the other activists who want to make a difference in Lusatia have a long history of anti-coal activism to learn from in western Germany, where millions of tons of coal have been mined since the 18th century, especially in the Rhenish lignite mining region. There, after years of activism and political lobbying, an early 2030 coal phaseout was achieved last year. However, the conditions for the coal phase-out could not be more different between western and eastern Germany. The “Ruhr area” in West Germany is a region that, while historically also dominated by coal and steel production9, had access to the international community for years during the period when Germany was divided into East and West. This meant that there were opportunities to build universities and attract international companies from around the world.This, in turn, made it easier to offer alternatives and re-training to coal mine workers and led to less overall resistance to the phase-out.

Although lignite mining was also greatly expanded in West Germany after 1945, it was not done to the same extent as in the East German Democratic Republic (GDR), where the socialist state's efforts to achieve autarky led to a boom in the industry. As a result of the major role lignite mining played in the GDR, the sector has been an important source of employment in the region ever since. In 2016, 3.3% of employees subject to social insurance contributions, i.e. more than 13,000 people, worked directly or indirectly for the lignite sector in the Lusatian mining region. Coal mining creates perspectives in a region where many people are afraid of not finding a new job after years of working in the coal industry, Maria from the hair salon says. This effect was reinforced because Cottbus, along with many other regions in the former GDR, was neglected by German politics for years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, resulting in a region that is structurally more than ever dependent on material goods like coal through a lack of alternatives. Maria is concerned that activists may not be sufficiently aware of this.

And indeed, when Ava and Ralph are confronted with this perspective, they seem self-critical for the first time. Raising the issue of jobs more strongly in the protest is the only thing he would do differently next time, Ralph admits. He believes that he and other climate activists still have a lot to learn about the jobs issue. The climate crisis can only be solved in a socially just way, he says. More jobs must be created in the region, there must be a variety of jobs, retraining must be paid for, etc. People must have the perspective of continuing to work in similar salary brackets. But that is not the case at the moment, they agree with Maria, the hairdresser.

When you walk through Cottbus, you can actually see new developments that seemingly contrast with the concerns of Maria and the activists: There is, for instance, the ICE train plant that is being built and will soon provide new job opportunities for the region. The closure of the Jänschwalde coal-fired power plant is, legally speaking, only a matter of time, and Leag is thinking about building solar and wind power plants with a total capacity of seven gigawatts in and around old open cast lignite mines. The solutions seem to be there - but their ultimate implementation depends on political will. In the case of Cottbus, it is not the concrete strategic considerations regarding the coal phase-out that are decisive, because that will come anyway.

What seems to be much more decisive is how the climate movement develops in eastern Germany and whether it succeeds in building strong regional ties and, above all, trust with local residents who have close ties to the coal industry. Whether the theory presented by Ava and Ralph works out seems to depend on precisely these local linkages and whether they succeed in framing their demands in close relation to regional challenges. Who knows, perhaps next the activists will conduct a protest in support of these new regional developments.

Broken panoramic views in an observation tower near the power plant in Cottbus. © Philipp Czampiel

Sources:

Clara S Thompson

Clara S Thompson is an American-German freelance journalist, columnist and author currently based in Germany.

She is the editor of the book "Aktionsbuch Verkehrswende" (2021, oekom Verlag) about the current movement for a mobility transition in Germany and gives numerous lectures a year on the topic of media & climate crisis, mobility and traffic transition as well as the transformation of the car industry. A graduate in cultural studies from the University of Leipzig, she is currently enrolled in a post-graduate program in sociology and transformation research at the University of Jena.

She has received support for her work by the DAAD, the Journalismfund Europe, the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation and John Hopkins University (AICGS), among others. Her work has been published in various German and international newspapers such as taz, Klimareporter, watson, Frankfurter Rundschau, Neues Deutschland and Al Jazeera.

Three months in prison: on challenges of anti-coal protest in East Germany

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