The voice of the G7 critics: Lisa Poettinger - an activist with Murnau roots

Created: 05/22/2022, 06:57

By: Peter Reinbold

Sought-after speaker: In 2021, Lisa Poettinger spoke at the final rally of the Easter March on Königsplatz in Munich.

The G7 do not have democratic legitimacy to make decisions that affect the world at large.

Lisa Poettinger © Extinction Rebellion

Along with three others, she is the voice of the Stop G7 Elmau alliance: Lisa Poettinger, who comes from Murnau, speaks for the critics of the summit at Schloss Elmau.

The student teacher has made a name for herself as a climate activist in recent years.

It accuses the industrialized nations of being largely responsible for the destruction of the environment.

Murnau

- She speaks quickly, a lot and persistently.

Lisa Poettinger has a lot to say.

Above all, it is things and content that climate and left-wing activists say when they want to draw attention to undesirable developments, what, from their point of view, is going wrong on this planet.

This is probably one of the reasons why Poettinger is part of the press spokesman team, which consists of four women and men and which the media want to feed before and during the G7 summit in Schloss Elmau with information about the actions that the Stop G7 Elmau alliance carried out during the summit from 26 to 26 May. plans until June 28th.

Poettinger (25), who comes from Murnau, graduated from Staffelsee-Gymnasium in 2015 and has been at home in Munich since then, does not want to give any details.

She assumes that there will be demonstrations like the one in 2015 at the first meeting of the seven most important heads of state and government in the Western world in the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

You may expect different protests around the summit, but probably no bigger protests than seven years ago - and above all no violent ones.

The conference venue is secured over a large area, penetrating to the castle is probably an impossibility.

Around 18,000 police officers are to ensure peace and order, including in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where a large rally has been announced.

"An action in the field of civil disobedience" should definitely exist,

according to Poettinger, this is what the “Stop G 7 Elmau” alliance agreed on.

Basically, you want to get people on the streets decentralized and all over the world anyway.

Focus on climate and refugee crisis

"We have to fight the climate and refugee crises," says Poettinger in an interview with the Tagblatt.

She doesn't want to presume to speak about the Ukraine war.

"I don't know enough about that." In her opinion, the statesmen who meet at Schloss Elmau are "not democratically legitimized to make decisions that affect the whole world".

The industrial nations are "largely responsible for the environmental destruction".

The G7 would have to cancel the debts of the poor countries of the Global South in order to enable sustainable development and to pay off a small part of the ecological debt that they have accumulated through their economic methods.

Saving the world and the environment, Poettinger, whose family still lives in and around Murnau, has made that a goal in life.

She was active in Extinction Rebellion for two years, when she left the group, switching to Fridays for Future was never an issue for her.

"I'm not young enough for that anymore.

At the moment I am mainly involved in the Open Anti-Capitalist Climate Meeting in Munich.”

Recently she has been in the front line more often and has been the face of some spectacular actions.

She acted as spokeswoman for the alliance "#noIAA", which mobilized against the International Motor Show, which had moved from Frankfurt to Munich.

Poettinger spoke for the forest squatters in the forest box in Neuried in 2021.

A forest was to be cleared there for gravel mining.

She also campaigned against the Munich Security Conference.

Poettinger is currently in Bonn, where the G7 finance ministers are meeting.

She will give a speech as part of a protest event that will be taking place through the city center of the former federal capital on Saturday. In June she will be taking to the streets next to the G7 summit to take part in an anti-imperialist campaign.

Awakening experience in South Africa

What was the trigger for Poettinger to enter the activist scene?

What socialized them politically?

The family probably not, according to Poettinger, a conservative view of things prevailed there.

Her awakening – Poettinger was already involved in social projects while she was still at school, organized cookery courses for refugee children – she probably had during a three-month traineeship at the Kannemeyer Primary School in Grassy Park near Cape Town (South Africa).

The conditions there shaped her because she experienced the poor conditions prevailing in other countries.

With a fundraiser that she organized in Murnau in 2016, over 4000 euros were raised, which were invested in the construction of a multi-purpose hall.

With the start of her studies in Munich at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, her career as an activist took off.

She is currently in her tenth semester of twelve of her five-part combination of subjects – including school psychology, English, ethics, German as a second language and education as sustainable development – ​​for teaching.

People who move on the left of the political spectrum are of course viewed critically - especially by politicians.

From 1972 to 1991 applicants in Bavaria for the public service were checked for their loyalty to the constitution.

Those who did not meet the criteria could not be hired.

When Poettinger was a participant in the Munich Round, a talk show on Bavarian television, the moderator asked Bavaria's Minister of the Interior, Joachim Herrmann (CSU),

whether someone with Poettinger's vita has a chance of becoming a civil servant at a high school.

"Mr. Herrmann didn't answer that," she recalls.

If the worst comes to the worst, she could imagine going into political education.

"People's survival is more important to me than my career."

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