Plan for windfarm in 'fairytale forest' stokes energy culture war

Deep in the woods that inspired the Brothers Grimm, past the tower from which Rapunzel threw down her hair and the castle where Sleeping Beauty slumbered lies a construction site that the far right has declared a crime against national soil and identity.

- Ajit Niranjan

In this quiet corner of Germany's "fairytale forest" in Hessen workers are clearing land and building access roads to erect 18 wind turbines.

The lorries rumbling through Reinhardswald have won the cautious backing of conservation groups, which consider the clean energy the turbines will generate a worthy trade-off for the 0.07% of forest they will occupy. But the project has divided locals and become a flashpoint for the far right, whose opposition to wind turbines has grown increasingly venomous in recent years.

At an Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) conference in January, just weeks before the party doubled its voting share to become the second-biggest force in parliament, the party leader, Alice Weidel, promised to "tear them all down" if the AfD came to power. "Down!" she cried to thunderous applause. "Down with these windmills of shame!"

Attacks on renewable energy and policies to reach net-zero CO2 pollution have become a core pillar of far-right campaigns across the developed world. Although Weidel later said she wanted to tear down only the wind turbines in Reinhardswald, not all those in Germany, her tirade marks a broader political opposition to wind power that is hardening as the energy transition picks up pace.