The largest brown coal hole in Europe is located in the Hambach. For years environmentalists have occupied a piece of forest and are fighting against RWE. Stones, faeces, Molotov cocktails were thrown, there have been hailing ads - now the quarrel escalates.
Last weekend, well over one thousand red-dressed people were forming a chain on the quiet motorway section of the A4 near Kerpen in North Rhine-Westphalia. A red line. Up to here and not further, that should mean.
The protesters met on the outskirts of the open-cast mining facility of Hambach, the largest brown coal mining facility in Europe, now ten times eight kilometers in size, currently 400 meters deep, and protected themselves against Hambacher Forst, an originally 5500 hectare forest area, today on the southern edge Of the brown coal hole is only 1500 hectares because many trees, as well as the A4, had already had to give way to the growing opencast mining.
The human chain was also involved in activists who campaigned against the most climate-damaging energy sources around the world, as well as citizens' initiatives from the region, which fear noise and air pollution. It was a broad, peaceful protest.
Everyday life on the outskirts of opencast mining in Hambach looks different: since April 2012, the Hambacher Forst has been occupied by braunkoing enthusiasts. The group, which consists of fifteen to fifty people depending on the season, has now set up its base camp in a neighboring meadow that belongs to a sympathetic local inhabitant. In the forest, the activists have built tree houses and barricades. In the now beginning grubbing season, they are prepared to entrench themselves and chain them to stop the forestry advancing forest workers.
944 criminal complaints were filed in the context of the clearing since 2013. Stones, faeces or Molotov cocktails were thrown, cable racks burned, excavators or treadmills blocked. At RWE it is said that the workers are afraid that the opponents are ready for anything. In the Waldbesetzercamp, on the other hand, the private security service that RWE has engaged is becoming increasingly brutal.
From the great dispute over the Energiewende, Hambacher Forst has become a small war. On the one hand, radical browning wrecks, which point to the high carbon dioxide emissions and the destruction of a whole region. On the other hand, a group that is under economic and social pressure, and 1400 open-cast miners, claiming that our power supply would not be guaranteed without the brown coal and that the people in the region are dependent on this industry.
The photographer Alexander Jesipow and I traveled to the Hambacher Forst several times this summer and autumn. We spent a lot of time with the activists, but also visited the open-cast miners themselves, talked to local residents, whose village would soon have to leave the brown coal - and with the actors in the background.
We soon realized that it was not just about the forest. The forest is just a symbol. Over the years, an anarchist community has set up the forest owners, which has become the last retreat in a hostile world. And the miners in the open pit not only fear the actions of the opponents. They have long been afraid of their existence. It's all about everything.
