Eviction of Lützerath: from the “place of pilgrimage” to the place of action

For weeks there has been speculation about the evacuation of the occupied town of Lützerath at the Garzweiler II opencast mine in North Rhine-Westphalia. In January it should be so far. Environmentalists and the police are preparing.

If the big politicians in Düsseldorf and Berlin take care of a small town with a few houses and a lot of arable land, something important must be at stake. In the case of Lützerath, this is undoubtedly the case. The little village, deep in the west between Aachen, Mönchengladbach, Cologne and Düsseldorf, has been busy officials, ministers and the public for months.

Because: Below Lützerath there is a large amount of brown coal that the energy company RWE is allowed to mine and burn for electricity production. The village is to make way for the Garzweiler II opencast mine. Not with us – say climate activists and keep the hamlet occupied. They claim that the coal under Lützerath is not needed despite the energy crisis and that the place can stay.

But now it’s about much more than just the town. “Lützerath has become a place of pilgrimage for activists, one of their most important arenas in the fight for the 1.5-degree target,” wrote Der Spiegel recently.

Eviction possible from January 10th

In January, the “place of pilgrimage” will most likely be transformed into a place of action for the police. Because after the turn of the year, the evacuation of Lützerath is due. The preparations for this have been going on for weeks.

It was only on Tuesday of this week that the district of Heinsberg, in which Lützerath is located, banned the stay in the hamlet and thus formally cleared the way for an eviction. “If the eviction is not followed, the order provides the basis for taking evacuation measures from January 10,” said the district administration.

The mayor of the city of Erkelenz, to which the village of Lützerath belongs, had previously rejected such a step and thus caused a stir. Because it became clear that not all those responsible on site support the eviction forced by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

In the past, the city has campaigned for the preservation of villages that are to make way for opencast lignite mining. Now the CDU politician Stephan Muckel also accused his own party friends in the black-green state government that the decision-makers at the local level should be given the “buck” for the eviction. The city could not order the eviction with its “five traffic monitoring forces from the regulatory office”.

Nevertheless, it could start from the second week of January. The big question is what exactly happens then. Will it stay with sit-ins? Do activists chain themselves? Is violence imminent? Memories of autumn 2018 quickly come to mind. At that time, the police cleared tree houses in the Hambacher Forst – a wooded area on the edge of the Hambach opencast mine, just over 20 kilometers from Lützerath.

Climate activists and occupiers put up bitter and sometimes violent resistance. It was probably one of the largest police operations in the history of North Rhine-Westphalia, driving the conflict between climate protectionists and the state to the extreme. In the end, the preservation of the forest was agreed.

Squatters in Lützerath are prepared

This success from back then lets the squatters of today dream of achieving something comparable in Lützerath. While the original residents have long since left the village, around 100 people now live there in tents, caravans, wooden huts or tree houses. There are workshops titled “Barricad building & To-Do’s”.

“We have been preparing for the eviction for two years,” Mara Sauer told the epd news agency a few days ago. The 25-year-old has been living in the camp for over a year. The Brandenburg native was politicized by the reports about the Hambach Forest. “That was the aha moment for me.”

Large-scale police operation

The North Rhine-Westphalian Minister of the Interior, Herbert Reul, has already appealed to the squatters not to escalate the situation. Peaceful protest is legitimate, said the CDU politician. But it will not be tolerated that “under the guise of climate protests, violent anti-government sentiment” is created. In that case, the authorities would “take decisive action”.

Unusually openly, Reul outlined how to proceed: in the form of a large-scale operation instead of piecemeal. “In the end, Lützerath has to be empty and that’s only possible with an overall operation in which firstly the barricades are removed, secondly the people are moved, thirdly all the houses are demolished and the trees are cleared – i.e. the occupation infrastructure is eliminated.” Otherwise, “we’ll be occupied again immediately and we’ll start all over again.” All of this sounds like a week-long operation for hundreds or thousands of police officers.

problems for the Greens

When the first officials actually arrive in January, it will be particularly tricky for the Greens. In 2018, they fought side by side with climate activists against the clearing of the Hambach Forest. The state association even organized a party conference at the demolition edge of the opencast mine. More solidarity was not possible.

Four years later, the situation looks completely different. The Greens sit on the government bench in Düsseldorf and Berlin. Two well-known faces, Robert Habeck and Mona Neubaur, as energy ministers in the federal government and in North Rhine-Westphalia, paved the way in October for Lützerath to give way to opencast lignite mining.

In return, the phase-out of coal was brought forward from 2038 to 2030 and half of the already approved mining volume of lignite remains in the ground. This enabled the rescue of five other villages. Nevertheless, the Greens are accused of treason by climate activists because they took action against Lützerath as a symbol of resistance to the anti-coal power movement – and endangered the climate goals.

How badly the coming events will harm the Greens will depend on how fierce the resistance of the squatters in Lützerath is and whether scenes like those in the Hambach Forest recur in front of the cameras. The mobilization in the scene is definitely in full swing. A large-scale demonstration in the town is called for January 14th. According to the environmental organization BUND, arrivals from all over Germany are expected.