A police officer removing the hand of a climate activist from the street at Grober Stern in front of the Victory Column in Berlin. Photos: Kay Nietfeld/dpa
The police officer is doing his best to make the process as pain-free as possible, carefully brushing solvent underneath the hand stuck to the pavement.
But freeing activists that have glued themselves to the floor is never pleasant.
As soon as the index finger is lifted a little, the first layer of skin covering the palm threatens to tear off, says the officer. Sometimes, this cannot be prevented.
Despite that risk, glueing oneself to the street or a building is a common tactic used by protesters all over the world, most recently rising to prominence again among climate activists.
Last year, two young protesters from the British Just Stop Oil movement which advocates for an end to new fossil fuel licenses, glued themselves to a painting in London's National Gallery. Others targeted Dutch master Johannes Vermeer's world-famous painting Girl with a Pearl Earring in the Netherlands.
In Germany, members of the climate group Last Generation, which is demanding a speed limit on the country's motorways as well as more affordable public transport, have also been associated with the tactic, for example when using it to cause blockades at Berlin and Munich airports last year.
In Munich, police have set up a special unit, dubbed Glue-On-Team, to deal with such cases.
After a long period of testing different substances, including on themselves, the officers now swear by a mixture of cooking oil and soapy water.
They only use stronger agents like acetone – a solvent used in nail polish remover for example – in emergencies, due to health risks.
Climate activists often voluntarily glue themselves to streets, which has resulted in police coming up with creative ways to unglue them without injuring them.
Luckily, most activists refrain from using more powerful two-component adhesives which often require a trip to the hospital with a gouged-out piece of tarmac stuck to the hand.
In order to dissolve superglue, the Munich police officers, like their colleagues in other German states, carry brushes of various sizes as well as spatulas and gauze bandages in a large black bag, in addition to their special solvent – pink soapy water, containing equal amounts of soap and water, mixed with commercially available cooking oil.
The bandages are used to apply the slick mixture in the most pain-free manner possible, carefully slid back and forth underneath the palm like dental floss.
Every few minutes, police chief Can Palabiyik pours warm water over the hand glued to the paving stone, which cools down surprisingly quickly in the cold air and takes on a purple hue.
Kneeling on pads, the officers usually spend between 30 minutes and about an hour patiently brushing away, depending on the nature of the substrate and the amount of adhesive used.
Most of the activists are cooperative and glad to be freed at the end, says Michael Trinkl, head of the Munich Glue-on-Team.
A handprint of a detached climate activist stuck to a bus in front of the Marriott Hotel at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. Photo: Paul Zinken/dpa
His people, he emphasises, always try to be as gentle as possible – which the activists appreciate.
"I have only had good experiences with police in Munich," confirms Andreas Hochenauer from the Last Generation group.For more than a year, Last Generation activists have been blocking traffic in major German cities including Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, but also in smaller cities such as Magdeburg, Jena, Passau and Reutlingen, by glueing themselves to busy roads with superglue.
According to the group, it staged 1,250 street blockades all over Germany until Jan 24, which marked the anniversary of the first action in Berlin in 2022, with some 800 people taking part.
Protesters were taken into police custody more than 1,200 times over that period, it said.
In Bavaria, the Ministry of the Interior counted 30 completed blockades until the beginning of January. The Glue-on-Team says it has been called out 35 times so far, including to street blockades as well as actions in companies or museums.
Officers in other German states proceed in a similar manner to the Munich glue experts, according to protesters.
"I was actually released very gently and carefully four times, and the police officers asked me every 30 seconds how I was doing, how I felt, and that I should tell them if it hurt," says activist Lars Schafer, recalling his experiences during climate protests in Hamburg, Flensburg and Hanover.
However, he has witnessed cases in which large pieces of skin remained stuck to the street after the activists had been detached.
In Munich, the process of freeing glued-on protesters is always filmed, "because in the rarest of cases, it happens that people suffer minor injuries while being detached", Trinkl explains.
However, only one young woman has been affected so far in the Bavarian capital, after she glued herself onto the road twice on the same day with the same hand, he says.
Normally, only adhesive residue remains on the reddened hand which may feel a little more sensitive than usual. Those effects usually fade away within a day.
Hochenauer, 30, and Schafer, 40, therefore worry less about being detached by police when glueing themselves to the road than about being attacked by angry drivers. In Berlin, for example, someone once drove over the foot of an activist sitting on the floor.
They are also concerned about the legal consequences for the protests, which in Bavaria can range from fines to preventive detention.
However, neither sees an alternative to participating in the climate actions.
While Hochenauer considers it to be a moral obligation to stand up for climate justice as a privileged Western European, for Schafer, it is "actually an act of desperation. I see these pictures and I have my little child in my arms and I'm afraid that it's going to be a very terrible world that we're rushing towards," he says.
In order to prevent this from happening, he is happy to accept the consequences for the glueing actions, the activist says. – dpa
