The time is symbolically selected. It was five past twelve as Carola Rackete, made famous as "Captain Europe", mounted a wooden ark and opened the Rebellion Week. In front of her are hundreds of demonstrators from the climate change movement Extinction Rebellion (XR), blocking a central hub in Berlin: the five-lane roundabout around the Victory Column, which towers behind the racket.
"The story of the Bible's flood is known to almost all people in Christian culture," she calls down from the ark, and people silently listen to her as she spans a wide arc: about how she, as captain of an icebreaker, precedes some Years at the North Pole saw the sea ice melt. And what consequences climate change could have worldwide: floods and a warming of three to five degrees by the end of the century, finally a mass dying.
The measures and laws planned by the Federal Government obviously do not satisfy the demonstrators. "That's why I'm here: To rebel against this destructive policy, we need to stay here and rebel until the federal government calls out the climate emergency and acts accordingly," says Rackete.
The crowd answers with chants. Time and time again they shout: "Extinction! Rebellion!" Rebellion against extinction.
With sofas against the end of the world
At the same time, Wilhelm Warnke, 24, sits three kilometers away on a couch in the middle of Potsdamer Platz, another central location in Berlin occupied by the demonstrators. Actually, bankers and government employees are streaming to work here, and traffic is usually bumper to bumper. Not today.
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Extinction rebellion: sitting blockade in BerlinThere are sofas and bookshelves on the floor, mattresses are lying on the asphalt, big bubbles are rising, young people with flowers in their hair and colorful flags make the place, which is otherwise known as gray real estate desert, suddenly colorful and alive. Again and again, new people arrive with bicycles, children are different than in "Fridays for Future" almost only in infancy and in the company of young parents.
Warnke wears a beard and T-shirt, has traveled overnight from Cologne, where he studies health care and has been involved in XR for months, among other things, he has occupied the Deutzer bridge.
It's about the truth - right?
"Students have been on strike for over a year now, and on September 20, 1.4 million people were on the street, but that does not seem to be enough," he says. "Politicians are unwilling to find an appropriate response to the climate crisis, and that's why we make it clear with the cast that we are not satisfied with it." The blockade of Berlin - although it has been planned for a long time, according to this logic is also a form of escalation: If demos are not enough, then it will be filled.
Warnke does not seem like a follower who simply joins a hype. He is afraid of violence at demos, he has thought well to come to Berlin, dealt extensively with the demands of the movement: First, according to XR, the government should "reveal the existential threat to the ecological crisis."
Warnke does not want to say that politicians deliberately lie, as some other activists do, but he says, "Politicians deny climate change in the sense that the measures they take do not do justice to reality." The world is sinking, and politics are watering down their modest climate package anyway - that is already limited to deliberate untruth.
Ambitious demands until 2025
In addition, XR calls for "reducing man-made greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025". It is probably the most radical approach of the movement. Warnke knows that this is not possible with a few simple steps. "2025 is ambitious, but I believe that the task of a social movement is to say what we want, and then we have to find an answer for how to implement it."
It should, if it goes to the will of the XR, the government a "citizens: in-house assembly" help. For this, people would be selected by lottery, whereby a quota system should ensure that it reflects the composition of the assembly society. With the help of experts, the Assembly should make a recommendation to the politicians on how to resolve the climate crisis.
Christian Ditsch / epd
"We do not want to replace other democratic structures, but currently the industry has the big lobbies and we want to counter something," said Warnke.
The Ditfurth controversy
The former Greens politician Jutta Ditfurth warns that XR has something undemocratic. XR is "a religious nonviolent esoteric sect," she wrote on Twitter. It was not until the weekend that there had been a controversy surrounding statements made by XR founder Roger Hallam. He said in an interview with SPIEGEL that in the face of threats of this magnitude, "democracy becomes irrelevant".
Warnke follows the debate with interest, but feels less touched. "Hallam co-founded XR, but we are organized in a decentralized way and have a consensus on what we do, what Hallam says there is not consensus, so it's his one-on-one opinion that I do not share." If you look around at the Potsdamer Platz and at the Victory Column, you feel that Dittfurth's statements are exactly what they are accusing the XR demonstrators of: fueling emotions that obscure the mind.
Protester Warnke says: "For climate activists, there is certainly a great love of nature, and a way of looking after each other well, always looking in between, that everyone is fine, that may be sectarian for outsiders, and I do not need that, but it is but it's nice to see that everyone is fine. " The police are strikingly in Berlin back. Unlike in London and other cities, no arrests were reported by the afternoon.
Many are ready for civil disobedience, including Kathrin Overath. The multiple grandmother claims to have turned her life upside down five years ago when her grandson was born. "I suddenly thought that things could not go on like that, and if we keep this up, my grandson will one day ask me why I did not do it anymore."
Overath got their information mainly through YouTube, she says. A short time later, she had become vegan and wanted to change her life fundamentally. "My family did not understand so much, we had endless discussions," she says.
Some time ago she moved with her partner from Hesse to Berlin, here she found the environment that had previously been missing. "But me and my partner often remained sad," she says. What she had learned here, Overath finally says, pointing to Potsdamer Platz, is that not only does she feel the same way. "We can be sad and we can defend ourselves - how we deal with nature is something we all care about."
Finally, no chief ideologues
It is this gentler association that attracts Lissa as well. She sits in the street at the Victory Column and is currently writing a protest postcard to her member of parliament. It was also politically active in the 1970s and 1980s, but there were always those chief ideologues who pushed themselves forward. Here it would be different, everyone would be so attentive to each other, that they even want to celebrate their birthday here. On Thursday she will be 76.
Warnke also has plans to block by the end of the week, has a tent and a sleeping bag, and in fact, many seem to have come to stay. The mood changes only in the late afternoon. The police announce that they will clear the blockades. In short, unrest breaks out among the demonstrators. Then decisiveness comes to mind. They want to keep their blockages.
