DRESDEN: The battle to stop a proposed bridge here has embroiled everything from a tiny endangered bat to the country's reigning literary lion, Günter Grass. Now activists with climbing gear and wooden planks have occupied a centuries-old beech tree to keep it from being felled as part of the construction of the controversial Waldschlösschen Bridge.
The tarps over the makeshift encampments in the beech tree's limbs whipped and banged so fast in a harsh, gusting January wind it sounded like a drum roll. Below, wrapped around the trunk, was a giant white sign decorated with a yellow sun and colorful flowers both absent on a recent winter afternoon, which declared in German, "I want to live."
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, better known by its acronym Unesco, agrees. The body has warned city and state officials that Dresden could become only the second site ever to lose its place on the World Heritage list if it builds the bridge, regularly described by opponents and even at times by supporters with the word "monstrous."
Unlike, for example, the historic center of Prague, it is the Dresden Elbe Valley, with its meadows and trees combined with its architecture that earned it a coveted spot on the list of 851 sites worldwide.
But backhoes and trucks are already at work, clearing ground from the meadows on both banks of the Elbe River and chainsawing down oak trees for construction of the access roads. While large construction projects are often the subject of legal battles and protests, the matter is particularly sensitive in Dresden.
Prior to World War II, Dresden was known as the "Florence on the Elbe," for its exceptional baroque and rococo architecture. The city was devastated in a series of Allied bombing raids in 1945. That began a long struggle to rebuild. Its status as a World Heritage Site is a point of pride for citizens of Dresden.
Leading a protest against the bridge here last month, Grass, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for works including "The Tin Drum," said that the history of the city's destruction meant "one must be particularly angry and alert that this form of destruction is never repeated."
Opponents have tried everything to stop the bridge from going up. For months construction was stalled after an administrative court ruled in August that steps needed to be taken to ensure that the endangered lesser horseshoe bat was protected. Experts estimate that only around 650 remain in Germany, some in the vicinity of the proposed bridge. But the courts ultimately ruled in November that work could proceed.
Protestors held a sit-in around several old oak trees which had survived the infamous fire bombing during World War II to prevent workers from chopping them down. Their action failed, leading a few days later to the predawn seizure of the beech tree.
Environmentalists from a nonprofit called Robin Wood approached at 5:30 a.m. on Dec. 12 and set up camp in and around the beech tree, where they have remained.
It is not an easy time of year to sit in a tree in the bitterly cold state of Saxony. "Sure is a lot of wind, loud rustling, but otherwise I slept well," said Alexander Gerschner, 42, who on Thursday morning had just come down from a six-hour shift in the tree.
The occupiers said they were being fed with donations by local supporters, receiving gifts of everything from Dresdner Stollen, the famous local Christmas fruitcake, to sushi.
Supporters of the bridge project say it will ease traffic congestion and better link the two sides of the city.
While the population of the state of Saxony, of which Dresden is the capital, has declined from 4.9 million at the time of German reunification to about 4.2 million currently, the rate of car ownership has risen more quickly than the population has fallen, from 423 per 1,000 residents in 1994 to 546 per 1,000 people last year.
Local officials sound exasperated when discussing the battle to build the bridge, which they say was first proposed for that very location back in 1896. Bridge proponents claim clear legitimacy, pointing out that the project won a citywide referendum three years ago with a convincing majority of 67 percent of voters.
"I'm for it," said Doreen Kaufhold, 20, a bookkeeper, waiting for a streetcar in central Dresden. "It would be a relief for traffic." She said she did not believe the bridge would ultimately cost the city its status as a World Heritage site.
"The bridge was disclosed in the application," said Gerhard Glaser, now retired but president of the monuments preservation office of Saxony from 1982 until 2002.
Planners are hoping to sway Unesco with modifications that would make the bridge less obtrusive, allowing them to have their crossing and their heritage status, too.
"We hope that with these changes we can reach a point where Unesco finds it acceptable and we can maintain the World Heritage status," said Michael Sagurna, a senior official in the Saxony state government. "Then we're fairly sure that with these changes the dispute won't be quite so heated as before."
Victor Homola contributed reporting from Berlin.
2 comments:
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