The chilling sculptures were harbingers of unprecedented protests and strikes that hit German roads and railways this week, and represent a dramatic change of mood in a country long feted for its consensus-seeking approach to industrial relations, especially compared with its more traditionally strike-prone neighbour France.
With key elections coming up in eastern German states this year, even some farmers fear the new revolutionary spirit could play straight into the hands of a buoyant far right.
An eight-day countrywide protest by agricultural workers, involving motorway blockades, began on Monday in spite of the government's partial U-turn on the policies that had triggered the action.
"We are exercising our basic right to inform society and the political class that Germany needs a competitive agricultural sector," the president of the German farmers' association, Joachim Rukwied, told Stern magazine on Monday, as the protests brought the centres of cities including Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and Bremen to a near-standstill.
In a sign of the levels of anger driving the protests, about 100 farmers last Thursday blocked the vice-chancellor and economy minister, Robert Habeck, from disembarking from a ferry in northern Germany.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der January 12, 2024-Ausgabe von The Guardian Weekly.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der January 12, 2024-Ausgabe von The Guardian Weekly.
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