It’s just after nine on Thursday morning when the “last generation” stands in front of the door of the Munich public prosecutor’s office. The climate activists would like to speak to someone in law enforcement and provide information about themselves. But no one answers the intercom, no one opens. So the activists stick some posters on the facade and the doors, telling them who is part of the core team of the eco-group, which has been blocking roads for months and urging governments to do more climate protection. This is said to be friendly assistance to law enforcement agencies who suspect that the “Last Generation” is a criminal organization. She therefore searched apartments and tapped phones, including conversations with journalists.
The action on Karlstrasse is intended as satire. The public prosecutor’s office justified the wiretapping with the aim of “clarifying” the structures of the group. Lars Werner, 31, clinical psychologist from Göttingen and one of the core group, explains the message of the campaign: Everything has been made transparent for a long time, a simple Google search would suffice, then the investigators of the “Bavarian Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism ” know. There are no conspiratorial structures in the “last generation”.
The action is calm and cheerful. Soon the yard of the office complex is teeming with police officers, everyone remains relaxed, and some of those in uniform grin. People from neighboring offices look out of the windows, wave, and clap. The first officer to arrive asks the activists in safety vests sitting on the floor if they are taped. “We just sit.” Then he politely presents them with a choice: Would they come a few meters over to take their personal details, or should one come to them? It’s ten o’clock, the activists want to call it a day anyway, so they’re happy to go to the police and hand over their IDs. The police later reported that they were investigating all ten activists on suspicion of property damage if the posters are not removed without leaving any residue, coercion because the caretaker locked the doors, and trespassing.
Full transparency: Lars Werner (left) identifies himself as a member of the core group of the “Last Generation”.
(Photo: Bernd Kastner)
On one of their banners is the demand that politicians should respect Article 20 of the Basic Law: “Protect life”. The posters show a photo of activists, a few screenshots from websites and an SZ article. The friendly officer from earlier asks what they used to stick the posters on. With normal wallpaper paste? No, with water and flour, i.e. flour cardboard.
Between the activists and the posters, a Sherlock Holmes looks for suspicious signs with a magnifying glass. Ronja Künkler disguised herself as a master detective, she wants to support the prosecutors in investigating: “I’m looking for the core group,” she says. “It’s really a tricky case.”