As previously reported, we (Nathalie and Manuel) were unexpectedly released from prison on September 22.
in German
(Below is a brief update on our release and the first few weeks afterward, followed by the subsequent publication of an open letter from prison dated August 2025).
At around 12:30 p.m., Nathalie’s cell door opened and a guard informed her that she was being released. She was not allowed to see her fellow prisoners, who were either locked up or at work at the time, except for a few to whom she was allowed to give small amounts of food. Then she was escorted out at around 4 p.m.
Manuel was notified of his release around 2 p.m. after his yard time. Since his cell block was open at the time he was able to give away more or less all of his belongings and say goodbye to his fellow inmates.
Before we were released from custody, a police officer from K43 was waiting for each of us, for Manuel it was KHK Unglaub and for Nathalie it was KOK Meyer, to give us a so-called “dangerous person warning.” Essentially, this consisted of warning us not to commit any crimes—not even “minor offenses” (KOK Meyer)—and referring us to an in-house de-radicalization program. We were assured that the doors of K43 would always be open to us.
While KHK Unglaub still refused to answer the question of whether we were now under surveillance, because he felt that his concerns had not been listened to properly and, above all, had been met with too much smirking, it took less than three minutes after our release for the surveillance officers to reveal themselves. When Manuel wanted to take a taxi (M QF 1185), the driver (an observer) gave himself away by turning his face away instead of simply replying that he was already booked, etc., and at the same time frantically pressed a kind of “panic button” in his right trouser pocket, while making sure that the vehicle was definitely locked and making energetic gestures with his hands, as if to say “go away.” It just looked like an exposed observer, not like a taxi driver during Oktoberfest.
So, back to square one. And that’s how it would remain in the days to come. Sometimes they tried harder, sometimes less so; sometimes they shamelessly took nude photos of us bathing in the Isar using a telephoto lens, sometimes they spied on us without such technical aids and, when within earshot, quickly turned away to avoid being addressed. When Manuel remembered the promise of open doors at K43 and wanted to see the necessary court orders for long-term surveillance and the use of technical means, an apparently easily irritable KHK Unglaub literally yelled at him that there were no orders and that Mr. and Mrs. Findeisen and Obermeier were responsible, as well as the General-SA. But as we already know from humanistic propaganda lessons based on the stories of Kafka, the gates of the General SA remained closed, of course, and a doorman barked at us that we still had to wait and needed an appointment, and that this was the General SA, where we had to submit our requests in writing and couldn’t just barge in during business hours. Fortunately, we were already used to all this from everyday life in prison …
But why were we released in the first place? In all the commotion, this had been deliberately concealed from us. One might say that it doesn’t matter—after all, we’re out. In fact, it was the Higher Regional Court, or more precisely the judicial association led by Judge Höhne, that had ordered our immediate release. The reason: our trial had clearly been delayed. Since the charges were brought in mid/late March, the judicial association Himmelstoß & Co., known as the 29th Criminal Chamber at the Munich I Regional Court (State Security Chamber), had still not decided when the trial was to be scheduled, and had even proposed dates as late as January 2026. This was now too obvious, because although it is common practice in the Bavarian justice system to leave remand prisoners languishing in jail, regularly exceeding the actual 6-month limit, this practice is disreputable when it is so blatant.
As KHK in Findeisen, the caring policewoman we know from the evening of the arrest, had promised Nathalie back then, our cabin in the woods was to be razed to the ground soon after our release. Heavy equipment was used to tear down our former home, cutting a wild swath through the undergrowth of the growing forest for this purpose. So the police keep their word.
The case against us both, as well as one other person, is tentatively planned for the end of January. Thus far, the court process is scheduled to last 10 days.
We would like to once again thank all of those in solidarity for sending postcards, letters, greetings, and all other possible forms of support, that reached us in prison. You gave us the strength we needed.
Nothing is finished, everything continues.
REBELLION IN TIMES OF TOTAL POLICE SURVEILLANCE
A letter from the otherworld about the latest wave of repression against Munich anarchists
Anyone who would not normally expect to encounter a cop in the woods, of all places, has been proven wrong over the past year in the Munich area. For the gentlemen and ladies of Munich’s State Security Service (SS) had set off into the woods, but not to leave behind the misery of their existence as henchmen of an exploitative system, bored by the concrete gray of their offices and the never-ending stacks of forms that make up the main work of a good German police officer, and to embark on the difficult but wonderful search for a freer and more dignified way of life. No, their mission was similar to the expeditions of so many explorers into the deep expanses of the world’s primeval forests: to study and research life they did not understand in order to better control it.
In the Munich forests, the SS cops set out to study the unknown: two anarchists who had made themselves at home in these woods. After observing, eavesdropping on, photographing, tracking, and pursuing them for quite some time, they took the logical next step: they captured these anarchists, locked them in cages, and searched and destroyed their huts. They also raided the homes of various other people they associate with them, stole all kinds of possessions, and now tried to blackmail them into providing information about their subjects of investigation by interrogating them as witnesses. And so these two anarchists find themselves robbed of their freedom and their loved ones, degraded to a number to be administered, in a stone tomb, condemned to wait…
These two anarchists are us, Manuel and Nathalie. In recent years, we have had the dubious honor of receiving special attention from the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Munich State Security Service. Now, on February 26 of this year (2025), we were arrested, followed by coordinated house searches of alleged “contact persons” of ours in Munich, the surrounding area, and Austria.
We have decided to write a joint letter to shed some light on the background of the latest wave of repression against anarchists in Munich and beyond by the Munich State Security Service (SS) and the Bavarian Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism (ZET). We also want to report on the methods and tactics the cops have been using for several years now to try to put an end to anarchist projects, to overwhelm an entire milieu with repression, to persecute both of us in just about every conceivable way, and to go into more detail about some aspects of our arrest.
But what exactly happened on the evening of February 26th from our point of view?
Around 8:30 p.m., we were both sitting in a Munich library when we were suddenly knocked to the ground and handcuffed by around 20 plainclothes cops. The reason: a remand order for alleged flight risk in the “Zündlumpen” trial, which had been going on for three years. We had allegedly tried to evade the trial because we were living in a self-built hut in the woods in the south of Munich.
They also announced the opening of further investigations against us.
They accuse us of publishing a newspaper called “Hetzblatt gegen den Windpark” (Agitational paper against the Wind Farm) together with two (now three) other defendants. This newspaper, which appeared once in the fall of 2024, was directed against the construction of a wind farm in the Öttinger Forest, a showcase project of the local chemical industry there. The newspaper is said to have condoned criminal acts and insulted politicians.
In addition, they accuse both of us of jointly committing a total of five acts of arson in the period 2023/24. Manuel is also accused of a sixth act of arson. These incidents involve arson attacks on construction machinery at a geothermal construction site in Polling, as well as on a machine parked nearby for forestry work and on the cable shaft of an adjacent railway line in October 2023, on forestry machines in the Hofoldinger Forest in December 2023, on work machines in the Südpark area of Munich, also in December 2023 (Manuel is the only one charged with this), a rail vehicle in Oberhaching in July 2024, a wind power plant in Berg in September 2024, and concrete mixers, a wheel loader, and a conveyor belt belonging to a concrete company, also in September 2024.
They combined our arrest with coordinated house searches late Wednesday evening in Munich, the surrounding area, and Austria. In addition to our “storage facilities” in the forest and a basement room rented by Nathalie, the searches mainly targeted other defendants in the “Hetzblatt” case and their shared apartments. However, house searches were also explicitly directed against alleged “close contacts” of ours, who have been harassed by the cops as “witnesses” in the arson case. In addition, numerous people have received witness summonses from the public prosecutor’s office.
So while the cops harass numerous people they consider to be part of our circle, we are both taken separately (and we have not seen each other again since then) to the premises of the State Security Service (SS) and the Police Headquarters (PP). After a very brief official interrogation, as we both refused to make any statements, we had to endure threats and defamation against each other for quite some time, as well as “well-meaning” advice, such as the suggestion to consider emigrating.
Around midnight, a cop from the canine unit arrives to wipe our necks with a handkerchief and “take a scent sample.” We are then taken to the cozy detention cells of the Munich Police Headquarters (PP), where we are allowed to spend the rest of the night and the next morning: constant light, day and night, a window that cannot be seen through or opened, no pillow, and from 6 a.m. onwards, no blanket and no cover for the plastic mattress. In addition, the tap doesn’t work for Nathalie, which the guards don’t care about in the slightest, so she ultimately has to drink from the toilet. But eventually it’s over and we are both brought before the magistrate, Manuel in the district court, Nathalie in the men’s prison at Stadelheim. One of us is then taken to the men’s prison in Stadelheim, the other to the women’s prison in Aichach.
A week later, we are picked up again by the cops and carted off to the forensic medicine department at the Nussbaum Clinic for a physical examination. On the way there and back, we both have to listen to more defamation about each other and further threats intended to persuade us to make a statement. Since then, the cops have left us alone.
WHO ARMS FOR WAR …
An overview of the repression against the “Zündlumpen” and Munich anarchists against their social background
At the beginning of 2020, a propaganda shockwave rolled out from Wuhan, China, across almost the entire world. One of the virus strains escaped from a laboratory where military-commissioned research was being conducted to increase the contagiousness of coronaviruses using spike proteins. Was it intentional? And even if not, what is the purpose of such research? Isn’t the use of such weapons supposedly a serious war crime? We ordinary people will not have the opportunity to discuss these questions. While the Chinese state is trying to completely seal off the Wuhan region, setting up military checkpoints, imposing curfews, and enforcing strict compliance with technological means previously unknown to the world, even in the darkest dystopias, the US immediately withdraws all its researchers from the laboratory in question and, like the rest of the Western world, whose governments had been more or less informed by their secret services, as we now know, concentrate on telling horror stories about bats and markets where they can be bought.
Is it fear of what we ourselves have created, or is it merely a large-scale, global experiment? Or is it more of a kind of economic war under false pretences? Perhaps it is a waste of time to try to clarify this today, even if it was the prelude to a new era of global wars. In any case, the fact is that within a few days, curfews and bans on contact with other people are being imposed on the populations of large parts of Europe, following China’s example. The global economy and trade are being shut down abruptly, and China is responding with a “Zero Covid” policy of total cybernetic confinement and control, which is being followed with great interest and admiration by (democratic) despots around the world. Bill Gates and all the other vaccine fascists, including large sections of the German “Antifa” movement, who at times openly called for a German version of China’s totalitarian “Zero Covid” policy, publicly denounced so-called “corona deniers,” i.e., people who refuse to accept the suspension of their rights, which they had previously believed to be inalienable, and who demonstrate against the government’s measures, —as Nazis and “deniers,” in line with the propaganda of the authorities – and ultimately even tend to overlook the fact that numerous marginalized groups, whose rights they otherwise so eagerly claimed to defend, are particularly hard hit by the measures they demanded and supported, are crawling out of their holes and shaping an alarmist and mendacious public discourse of “stay-at-home,” a kind of general mobilization for absence. The police enforce all this with beatings, fines, and arrests if necessary, checking people in the park, breaking up parties of young people, and pursuing anyone who is still out and about at night in violation of the curfew. But what are we telling you? You surely remember this time well yourselves.
So while the state is bringing the press into line and installing a whole new kind of nationalism, that of “solidarity” compulsory vaccination, which of course is not compulsory; only “freedom without vaccination, that won’t happen,” says Markus SöDDR, as some called him at the time, it goes without saying that repression must also be unleashed against all those who are not prepared to put on the (medically) prescribed muzzles. It is the big moment for the newly founded Bavarian Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism (ZET), which immediately begins its work and thus the persecution of vaccination opponents, “corona deniers,” anarchists, and the like. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann himself will open the hunt for anarchists in Munich because of an exchange he started with the “Zündlumpen,” an “anarchist weekly” that was published in Munich at the time and was one of the very first critics of the coronavirus measures, or more precisely because of an overly threatening-looking winking smiley face.
At the behest of the Bavarian police chief, secret and less secret police forces are taking action. With the approval of parliamentarians Katharina Schulze, Alfred Sauter, and Alexander Flierl, the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution is monitoring the mail of around 15 (suspected) anarchists and conducting surveillance on this group of individuals. Although he repeatedly extends his permission to do so because his observations have “not yet yielded the desired findings,” he willingly conjures up three “suspects of the Zündlumpen editorial team” when the less secretive police drop their investigation into the Zündlumpen due to a lack of promising leads. Three people is the absolute minimum for proceedings under Section 129, “formation of a criminal organization,” which is supposed to be equivalent to publishing a newspaper, and such proceedings in turn provide the necessary basis for the implementation and subsequent use in criminal proceedings of surveillance measures, telephone and postal monitoring, etc. What a coincidence.
This was followed by raids, DNA sampling, and the theft of an entire printing press, as well as thousands of anarchist publications, in an obvious attempt to prevent the spread of anarchist ideas. The police treated the stolen printing shop like a crime scene, securing fingerprints and DNA traces. Among other things, they collected cigarette butts from an ashtray and, lo and behold, they had a fourth suspect. Although the LKA laboratory had by then been able to rule out all printers from this printing shop as having been used to produce the “Zündlumpen,” who cares about that?
After another raid, the Munich State Security Police, led by Florian O., Jannine F., and Johannes R., devoted themselves primarily to reading. They eventually named their investigation team “EG Schrift” (EG Writing). Thanks to the extensive notes of this reading group, we now not only finally know what some of the thickest volumes of anarchist works actually contain, but we also gained a few translations and learned a lot about the biblical and Hobbesian figure of Leviathan. Parallel to their anarchist reading circles, the cops also managed to get the premises of the anarchist library “Frevel” terminated by repeatedly putting pressure on the landlord. Florian O. also shows up at the job center and then writes in a triumphant memo that he has obtained the cancellation or non-renewal of the benefits of both of us, Nathalie and Manuel. Due to the resulting lack of rent, the landlord, who had previously been investigating our supposed presence in the apartment on behalf of the cops, evicted us from the apartment by his own authority.
The cops, meanwhile, who are hunting for Nathalie’s blood or saliva in order to obtain a DNA sample from her, which, according to a court ruling, will help complete the “mosaic” of the indictment, are monitoring Nathalie’s bank account and specifically withdrawals from it, her parents’ cell phones and telephone lines, investigate course participant lists at Nathalie’s former vocational school—which she attended over 10 years ago—ask all kinds of online platforms for any user data, accounts, and delivery addresses, carry out surveillance, and finally pick Nathalie up at her parents’ house on Christmas Day and secretly follow her from there to a supposed temporary residence. However, obtaining her DNA does not seem to be important to the MEK surveillance forces and their SS clients. After two weeks of round-the-clock surveillance, they break off their efforts without having asked even once about that special juice.
Instead, over a month later, a couple of rowdy cops show up and simply pull Nathalie and me off our bikes during a staged “random” check. What began (almost) like something out of Hollywood ultimately ends in an act of bureaucracy, the favorite activity of the “real police.”
EG RAUTE, THE ANARCHISTS, AND THE ARSONIST
While the cops hunt down a newspaper, steal printing presses and paper, and form reading circles to read through hundreds of anarchist publications they seized during the 2022 raids, they are faced with a completely different problem: A “firedevil” has been wreaking havoc in Bavaria for several years now. At least, that is how the local press has been referring to a “series” of arson attacks targeting cars, construction and forestry machinery, infrastructure facilities such as radio masts, railway facilities, geothermal energy, wind power, and even the police’s own infrastructure. There has been talk of up to 50 arson attacks and 25 million euros in property damage. Since August 2023, a specially established investigation team, known as “EG Raute,” has been investigating.
But who could it be? Even after years of investigation, the cops are still in the dark. How embarrassing for Germany’s “safest city” and the Bavarian police force, known for its toughness… er, Free State. Well, at least for individual acts, as the cops write extra cautiously in a press release, they suspect an “extremist” motive. More specifically, an anarchist one.
Because, as the BKA has painstakingly and intensively ascertained through their investigation, anarchists don’t like the state. They even see it as a “repressive coercive authority” that “must be smashed.” They also found out that “classical” anarchists consider “attacks against infrastructure facilities to be an effective means” because infrastructure serves the state “as an important instrument for monitoring and controlling the population” and ensures “the orderly functioning of the system.”
However, the cops have a problem: in this “series,” with very few exceptions, they have been unable to find any letters of confession (known as “SBS” or ‘Selbstbezichtigungsschreiben’ in officialese) that would allow them to classify the acts as “political.”
But the BKA believes that this is more of an argument in favor of the attacks being anarchist in nature, because “SBS” are superfluous from an anarchist point of view, as the crimes are supposed to be so “well thought-out and ideologically clear” that they speak for themselves. In the case of the crimes they classify as part of the “series,” they believe this to be true. Even if an SBS were to exist, this would not argue against anarchists being the perpetrators. Logical, since that is also stated in the document. However, instead of the SBS, “documentation” is more common in anarchist publications.
And this brings us back to our reading circles, which were probably set up not only by the Munich SS cops, but also by the BKA for the purpose of studying anarchist writings. The BKA analyzes anarchist publications and websites such as “Zündlumpen,” “Zündlappen,” “Sozialer Zorn” (both of which are described as “successor projects” to “Zündlumpen”), “Sans Nom,” and “Switch Off” with regard to their reporting on various arson attacks in Bavaria, desperately trying to find possible personal connections to the Munich area and the reported crimes, and speculating about the authorship of articles and the possible existence of an “international anarchist group.”
At this point, we, Manuel and Nathalie, as alleged co-editors of “Zündlumpen,” come under the scrutiny of the EG Raute. Since French is an incredibly rare language in Germany, and even more so in France, the BKA speculates that Nathalie, due to her French roots, could be the author and translator of French-language articles about various arson attacks in Bavaria on the French-language website “Sans Nom.” However, they cannot find any more concrete evidence than the fact that Nathalie speaks French fluently. Currently, the EG Raute is discovering a whole series of incredible “circumstantial evidence” against us.
“Footprints”
or: The evidence room ghost
As we all know, arsonists have magical powers, and perhaps they are also able to conjure things out of and back into the K43 evidence room. In any case, the cops found “shoe prints” during the arson attack on the geothermal construction site in Polling in October 2023, as well as during the arson attacks on forestry machines in the Hofoldinger Forest in December 2023. “Shoe print traces” that are said to have the same profile as a pair of unused shoes that they confiscated during house searches at the end of April 2022 in connection with the “Zündlumpen” proceedings in a basement room rented by Nathalie. Abrakadabra! – Incidentally, this is a sole profile that they attribute to several no-name models from Tedi and Kik.
A bicycle rides across a bridge
But that’s not all the cops have discovered that’s sensational: They claim to have recognized Manuel on a camera hidden by the EG Raute on the Großhesseloher Bridge, a railway and pedestrian bridge over the Isar River, crossing the bridge by bicycle at a time close to the suspected time of the arson attack on construction machinery in the Südpark area in December 2023. However, for anyone unfamiliar with the area, the Großhesseloher Bridge is several kilometers away from Südpark. Furthermore, the quality of the recording is so poor that they can only assert that there is nothing to contradict the theory that it could be Manuel.
Orange is the New Black
But, but wait, there is another photo, taken by a wildlife camera. A good three weeks before the arson attack on forestry machines in the Hofoldinger Forest, a pedestrian was photographed by a wildlife camera near the later scene of the crime. Actually, there were many more pedestrians than just this one, but this pedestrian—male or female—who can only be seen from behind and from a distance, was wearing an orange jacket. This jacket is said to resemble a jacket that Manuel wore while being surveilled a month later—both jackets are orange. At least there is nothing to contradict this theory. Incidentally, at the time the photo was taken, the forestry machines in question had not only not yet been parked at the later crime scene, they had not even been used in the entire Hofoldinger Forest.
“Those who sleep together must also go out and start fires together.”
Or: Big Brother sends his regards
Wow, that’s some evidence, and since we are known to be partners and have “appeared” together several times in the past, it is completely clear that we must have committed the three arson attacks together. Conveniently, in connection with the “Zündlumpen” trial, they stalked Nathalie at her parents’ house on Christmas Day and followed her to what they believed to be her temporary residence. They followed us around for two whole weeks. Early one morning, however, they lost sight of us. Since the automatic license plate recognition system reportedly detected Nathalie’s car heading toward Austria on the highway, it was clear to them that we must have driven to Austria.
Now, over the next few weeks and months, they were finally able to pull almost everything out of their bag of tricks that the modern democratic surveillance state has to offer. They issue new orders for long-term surveillance and telecommunications surveillance against us, and since they suspect we are in Austria because one of our “key contacts” is said to reside there, they also request a European investigation order to allow them to conduct surveillance in Austria and organize a search of a residential building in Austria by the local cops to see if we are staying there. They also send a request to Flixbus and Deutsche Bahn to find out whether we have booked a trip there, and obtain a warrant to bug Nathalie’s car with a GPS tracker and microphone. But for now, we remain untraceable.
In addition to Austria, they are also keeping an eye on us in Munich and the surrounding area. They lurk at Munich’s “scene locations” and in front of Nathalie’s parents’ house, eavesdrop on her family and supposed roommates, and actually “detect” us again and again in this and that place, only to lose us again. Then they learn from Nathalie’s family’s TKÜ that we are supposed to have moved to the forest! Within nine days, they subject us to two “random checks,” once in the city and once in the middle of the forest, both times under the pretext of “suspicion of bicycle theft,” kidnap us to the respective police station, and hold us for hours. Each time, we were “identified” by police officers beforehand. They finally get hold of Nathalie’s DNA. Nevertheless, they lose us again afterwards. They also discover that we have a list of license plate numbers of “civilian emergency vehicles,” i.e., surveillance vehicles. From now on, the motto is: cover before effect. Which doesn’t make it any easier not to lose us.
A good month later, after Nathalie’s car was “spotted” in the east of Munich, they finally managed to fit it with a GPS tracker within a few minutes and spontaneously organize surveillance. The stalking took on a new dimension: drones followed us into the forest after dusk, and a basement rented by Nathalie was searched again. On family members’ birthdays, they lurk outside the door, monitor family members’ emails, closely accompany various trips and major family events with the involvement of local cops, including temporary telecommunications surveillance and surveillance orders for suspected targets and possible “contact persons” at home and abroad. Once, they spontaneously organize surveillance after detecting movement of Nathalie’s vehicle thanks to the GPS tracker. Again and again, we are “detected” at different times in different places inside and outside Munich.
After almost half a year, they finally make a breakthrough: they discover our “camps.” At last, they can really let loose. They dot the area with wildlife cameras and microphones. Even Nathalie’s car, after she leaves it unattended for a few hours, is finally equipped with a microphone. If only the technology would cooperate… It takes them a good two months before they can finally sit back and listen. But it mustn’t rain! Unfortunately, Nathalie has given her car away in the meantime. But the “camps” are still there. So they eagerly follow construction progress, arrival and departure times, visits, and evaluate the intimacy of conversations to identify “close contacts.”
“Scent Trails”
Or: Inspector Rex’s Big Moment
They also sneak into the “camp” to hold a handkerchief up to randomly selected items that they believe can be individually attributed to us, and then place it in a jar. In officialese, this process is called “odor sampling.” They took these handkerchiefs during the arson attack on a construction train in Oberhaching in July 2024, the attempted arson attack on a wind turbine in Berg in September 2024, and the arson attack on a conveyor belt, several concrete mixers, and a wheel loader at a concrete plant, also in September 2024, and then presented them to Inspector Rex or his colleagues, known as “odor trace differentiation dogs.” And lo and behold: when sniffing the remains of barbecue lighters, barbecue lighter packaging, and a canister lid, they barked! In Oberhaching, search dogs are even said to have run around for a few dozen meters!
Meanwhile, they are increasingly focusing on our supposed environment. When “meetings” are expected at the “camp,” they install a camera on the visitors’ presumed route and carry out cell tower queries. The camera is also intended to facilitate the start of surveillance of us and supposed visitors, as we are not the only ones classified as experienced in surveillance. Shared apartments of suspected “close contacts” are now also being fitted with (police) cameras, as is Nathalie’s basement. The cell phones of several suspected “close contacts” are being tapped.
In mid-January, they decide to go on the offensive. On January 17, they issue search warrants against us on suspicion of arson in five or six cases. But they take their time with the search. Then, conveniently, the General SA announces that the “Zündlumpen” case is finally ready for indictment. It’s about time, because if something doesn’t happen soon, the criminal offense of threatening Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Hermann will become time-barred (remember, a winking smiley that caused Joachim a lot of trouble marks the beginning of our story).
Since neither of us has a permanent residence, this means that they can put us in pre-trial detention on the grounds that we are a flight risk. That sounds much better in the press if there were also arrests in the “EG-Raute” case! However, after the significant blow against the alleged “arsonists,” it somehow doesn’t sound right with two people and three properties (two “warehouses” and—for the third time!—Nathalie’s basement). So, in no time at all, a second investigation is launched, which includes two other defendants besides us and five more properties, several of them in Austria. That sounds like something! On the same day, February 4, arrest warrants are issued against us and search warrants are issued in connection with this new investigation. In the usual manner, this new investigation is once again a “time-consuming procedure.” Two sentences in a newspaper that had been distributed two months earlier in the Altötting district of Bavaria were allegedly not formulated in a manner consistent with democracy (more on that in a moment). Just one week before the well-staged “showdown,” search warrants were also issued against alleged “close contacts” and “witnesses” in the arson investigation. One more object! And now we have, as the Welt am Sonntag so sensationalistically put it, “probably the largest police operation against an autonomous and clandestine anarchist sabotage cell in recent years”!
THE “HETZBLATT” AND THE WIND FARM
Poisoned soil, sealed surfaces, polluted air, contaminated water… over the last 150 years, industry, with its insatiable hunger and the waste it produces, has changed, poisoned, and destroyed our landscape at an unprecedented rate. The consequences of this campaign against the balance of all living things are becoming increasingly apparent. The supposed fight against these consequences – subsumed and reduced to the battle cry of “climate change” – now serves as justification for the next attack on Mother Earth: the so-called “energy transition” by means of “green” technologies. While the hunt for the raw materials needed for this tears thousands of new wounds in our and all landscapes, especially in the landscapes of the many colonies of the various large industrial nations, contaminating the groundwater and soil, and robbing the people living there of their livelihoods, either driving them away or directly and indirectly forcing them to work in the new mines, thousands of new eyesores of the industrial age are springing up here and elsewhere, further disfiguring landscapes already so heavily marked by industry. Wind turbines, solar fields, gigantic power lines, pipelines, pumped storage, hydro, gas, and geothermal power plants, and LNG terminals are being built as quickly as possible.
While everyone is talking about replacing old energy sources with new “renewable” ones, it is obvious that – as with every previous “energy transition” – this is actually about expanding and diversifying energy sources. This expansion is urgently needed by industry and the state, because the development of a totally monitored, alienated and perfectly controllable tech dystopia, commonly referred to as “digitalization,” is causing energy demand to rise immensely. We are told that digitalization is also an indispensable aid in “saving the climate.”
Yes, yes, “climate protection” and a totally tech-driven world are not contradictory, as one might instinctively assume, but go hand in hand. In this context of the intensification of the separation of humans from nature in the name of nature—at least as desired by tech patriarchs—an area in southeastern Bavaria that has been serving as an “sacrifice zone” for industry for a good hundred years, the so-called “Bavarian chemical triangle,” is confronted with one of the numerous climate protection projects of industry and politics: Bavarian political leaders and the chemical company Wacker want to install 40 wind turbines in the largest contiguous forest in the area, the Öttinger Forest. This future “largest onshore wind farm” in Germany is expected to cover 10% of the “Chemical Triangle’s” electricity needs, or 5% in view of the anticipated increase in electricity demand in the coming years.
After concreting and taming the local rivers Inn and Alz by building hydroelectric power plants, poisoning the soil, poisoning the Alz, killing millions of fish, poisoning the groundwater, and poisoning the local population, the next attack on the inhabitants of this region and their homeland is now underway. To the surprise and annoyance of all those who came up with this fantastic showcase project for Bavaria’s “energy transition” and who probably assumed that an area where a large part of the local population is financially dependent on it would simply swallow it, many residents are up in arms against it. The whole thing made national headlines when two municipalities rejected the planned construction of wind turbines on their territory – 13 in total – by a majority vote in a citizens’ initiative. While the residents who voted against the project were defamed in the media as backward hillbillies and Nazis, the deputy prime minister of Bavaria and chairman of the Bavarian State Forestry Authority, which owns the relevant forest areas, Hubert Aiwanger, overturned the so-called “municipal clause” on the basis of which the two municipalities concerned were able to reject the wind turbines, and announced that he would examine how long such a veto was legally binding. While Bavarian Minister President Markus Söder and Aiwanger also rail against the democratic instruments in which many citizens’ initiatives, not only around the Öttinger Forest, are placing so much hope in the fight for their homeland—the right of collective action, citizens’ initiatives, etc. and would prefer to have abolished them yesterday rather than today, others talk about how the residents were “too poorly informed” and that ‘communication’ needs to be improved. The message is clear: “no” is not an option. The windpark will be built no matter what.
In this heated context, a small brochure entitled “Hetzblatt gegen den Windpark” (Agitational pamphlet against the wind farm) appeared at the end of November. It was distributed widely in several communities directly affected by the wind farm project and made headlines. The district discussed its contents, various citizens’ initiatives publicly commented on it—and the police investigated.
But what is in this brochure that causes such unrest?
Let’s let the brochure speak for itself:
“What if the population gave a resounding ‘no’? A ‘no’ and that’s that. A ‘Where are we going with this? We’re not negotiating with you, go to hell!’”
“If politics is so corrupt, then we shouldn’t get involved in it in the first place… Nor should we get involved in the means of politics. They accustom us too much to delegating control of our destinies to others instead of taking matters into our own hands; to waiting and doing nothing until we are allowed to check a box somewhere and think that this gives us a say in anything. They give us the impression that we are negotiating on equal terms with those in power, when in reality they condemn us to passivity and acceptance of their plans.”
“… does anyone today seriously believe that technological progress makes people happier and more relaxed? Or does all this technological progress – which is increasingly invading every part of our lives – perhaps bring more benefits to others than to us?”
I would say that the concept of energy is purely a project of domination that cannot change for the better. Why not think about life without energy? That may sound absurd now, but why not take a leap into the unknown?
The destruction of the world continues apace, while government propaganda tells us that reducing CO2 emissions is the solution, but even “renewable energies” continue to devastate the planet.”
“Perhaps it is simply not a good idea to help people to power, or to tolerate them there, no matter who they are. Perhaps the problem is that such powerful people exist at all. And since democracy does not challenge this relationship, it is not surprising that it seems to serve only the interests of the powerful. … That it exists to implement the plans of the great thinkers—who, in the air-conditioned rooms of their offices and lofts, their villas and lounges, have lost all touch with reality and are interested neither in the individual nor in the peculiarities of a place and its community—at the expense of the people and at the expense of their homeland.”
And what do the cops have to do with this?
The cops, alarmed by the positive reference to the protests against the construction of the uranium reprocessing plant in Wackersdorf in 1986, are once again investigating on suspicion of various “journalistic crimes.” They are outraged by the blunt insults directed at Bavarian and German politicians: former Minister of Economic Affairs Habeck, who didn’t dare leave the ferry when angry farmers wanted to talk to him, is called a “wimp” and a ‘coward’; Hubert Aiwanger is called “asshole Hubsi” and “professional summit-clapper,” and “windbag.” Söder is also called a “windbag.”
The cops also read various message boards reporting acts of sabotage against wind measurement masts, forestry machines, a concrete plant in Munich, and a wind turbine in Berg very carefully, because they suspect that criminal acts may have been condoned.
Ultimately, the General-SA objects to a total of two phrases, which are reason enough for them to search a total of seven “objects” and to open preliminary investigations against four, now five, anarchists from the Munich area and Austria, to search one “object” twice, and to order and carry out DNA sampling. The title “Rage against the Forestry Machine” in connection with a report about a total of eight forestry machines set on fire in the Munich area and in Erlangen, as well as two flattened forestry machines in the Upper Palatinate last winter, infuriates the obviously humorless General SA.
They also don’t find it funny that the attempted arson of a wind turbine in Berg is described as “a fiery protest note from unknown perpetrators.” In both cases they investigate due to a suspicion of condoning criminal activity.
They base their suspicions against the five defendants mainly on alleged findings from the total surveillance against both of us and our alleged associates in connection with the “EG-Raute” proceedings.
PSYCHOLOGY OF EXTREMISM FOR DUMMIES
Yes, the plot that the cops came up with and served up to us that evening has all the elements of a dramatic action thriller about “extremists”: a secret hideout in the woods, a fervent fanatic and his submissive wife, an “inner circle” as their only contact with the outside world, a spectacular arrest, and sincere cops trying to stop the two and, if possible, lead them back onto the right path. Great material for the next Netflix series.
But while the arrest provided us with a nice and cleanly executed action scene—albeit a very short one by movie standards—the subsequent interrogation disappoints due to the lack of acting talent of some of the actors and overly clichéd characters.
Yes, the cops, after the official interrogation was extremely short due to our refusal to testify, became very talkative and personal, the men with the men and the women with the women, and told us an interesting story: We had hidden in the forest and only a select circle of people were allowed to have access to us. Because the cops had been bugging the cabin for the last six months, they knew about this circle. A circle that had now been summoned for witness questioning, and where there was bound to be someone who “wanted to get his head out of the noose,” as is always the case, they assured us. In any case, the relationship we had with each other was completely toxic. Because Manuel is a fervent fanatic, ruthless and narcissistic, who doesn’t care about people in general, but especially his girlfriend. He indifferently destroyed her life and her dreams in order to use her for his own agenda. His girlfriend is constantly belittled by him, and he has managed to make her completely subservient to him. Neglected on the outside (the body hair!) and broken on the inside, she has so far been unable to admit to herself that she has been betrayed by him. And that despite the fact that she is a feminist. But the cops would like to help her get out of it, because it would be a shame to go to jail for someone else’s ideas.
Wow! Great cinema. If only the acting performance of the cops hadn’t been so awful. Because the moralizing on the one hand and the female solidarity rhetoric on the other don’t really have the desired effect. Everything sounds too rehearsed, like a Catholic priest’s sermon.
And that’s despite the fact that they even brought in professional support in the form of high-ranking homicide detectives for this key scene. But as is often the case with guest appearances by professionals in an amateur troupe, the technical skill may be outstanding, but the script is lacking.
They do try hard to back up this image with “evidence”: They embellish it with quotes from the wiretapping operation at the cabin that are taken out of context and twisted in an adventurous way, refer to a diary stolen in 2022 during searches in connection with the “Zündlumpen” proceedings, and to telephone conversations with relatives that they have wiretapped.
And by the way, they would not leave us alone for the rest of our lives if we did not change our lifestyle. Our huts would, of course, be demolished.
Many threats, many defamations, the strategy is obvious: they want to build up psychological pressure, instill fear, sow doubt and discord, and put all our relationships to the test, hoping to perhaps hit a sore spot and cause a rift.
By repressing people who have visited us at our hut, as well as their shared apartments, they are trying to isolate us both from our friends. They also want to drive us apart, through the physical separation of imprisonment and shameless lies about each other.
Could it really be that the man was just using her? Could it really be that the woman just wanted to please him? Apparently, drawing a picture of such a relationship is a common interrogation method when arresting life partners, as several fellow prisoners reported.
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This text was written under difficult conditions, as we were both in prison separately, our communication with each other was often deliberately slowed down (a letter took between 3 and 6 weeks), and even after 6 months in prison, we were not granted equal access to all (parts of) the investigation files. In describing the repression, we have limited ourselves to what our perspective allows, knowing full well that there are many more aspects and stories to tell, in the assumption that others will supplement our narrative if necessary.
With love and a raging fire in our heart,
Nathalie and Manuel
Aichach & Stadelheim, August
