It was proverbs like "love instead of hate" or "school without racism" that the offenders seem to have raised: In the schoolyard of a high school in Hagen, North Rhine-Westphalia, unknown people fell on the weekend a tree, the pupil as a sign against racism with had adorned about 150 colorful banners.
"The perpetrators must have climbed over the fence with the ax at night," says headmaster Michael Pütz. They chopped off the about five meters high and around 60 years old hawthorn and threw it into the river Ennepe. There he is doing now.
Christian-Rohlfs-Gymnasium
Hawthorn in the Ennepe
The police Hagen determined in the case. There is an ad for property damage, so Pütz, also the state protection is involved, according to police report. The department is turned on when a political motive is suspected.
Pütz can not quite explain the rage of the unknown. The colorful ribbons fluttered for almost a year from the branches, the tree was already decorated last December. He suspects that the perpetrators became aware of the school, because this had participated in a peace festival on the weekend.
Headmaster Pütz is now considering how he can recover the tree again. "We do not like that," says Pütz. And certainly not do it. The students are frightened and amazed by the fact. But the student representatives wanted to put the tree back up.
For Friday, another action is planned so that the messages from the tree are not lost. Then, according to Pütz, the students want balloons to rise, on which they fasten bright ribbons like the hawthorn. On them the sayings like "love instead of hate" or "school without racism" are to be carried high up.