Environmental activists in Berlin, Germany, performed a little more than your average tree trimming on Wednesday when they chopped off the tip of a large, iconic Christmas tree in front of the city’s popular Brandenburg Gate.
Two members of the group Letzte Generation (Last Generation), a civil resistance organization focused on bringing attention to the impacts of climate change, were elevated to the top of the Christmas tree in Pariser Platz using a hydraulic lift, The Associated Press reported.
Dressed in orange high-visibility vests, the two female protesters used a hand saw to chop two metres from the top of the formerly 15-metre-tall Nordmann fir tree.
Round, silver ornaments still hung from the branches in one of the protester’s hands as they hung a banner from the lift, reading: “This is only the tip of the Christmas tree.”
The statement, according to a press release from Last Generation, is a nod to how Germany has only witnessed the “tip” of the climate crisis.
“While all of Germany spends the week picking up the best gifts from the biggest stores, others wonder where they get their water to drink after droughts and floods have destroyed their crops,” activist Lilli Gomez said in German, while still holding the sawed-off Christmas tree at the scene. “The climate collapse in Germany is just around the corner and the federal government makes no effort to protect us.”
German news outlet DW confirmed that police eventually visited the scene and removed the protesters.
This is not the group’s first public stunt of this kind.
Last Generation regularly blocks major roadways in protest of climate change. In October, members threw mashed potatoes at Oscar-Claude Monet’s famous painting Les Meules (Haystacks).
In November, Italian protesters belonging to the same group doused Andy Warhol‘s BMW M1 Art Car in eight kilograms of flour.
In Germany specifically, Last Generation has called for Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the German government to take more action against global warming.
Scholz has previously called for the group to show “a little creativity” after one road blockade allegedly delayed the arrival of paramedics to the scene of an accident in October.