The activists of the "last generation", who block roads and sometimes stick to the asphalt, have avoided Hesse for months.

The previous major blockades in the state were in April.

For more than two weeks, access roads in Frankfurt were paralyzed, the anger was great.

At the beginning of this week, the Ministry of the Interior in Wiesbaden announced its determination to deal with the road blockers, in individual cases and after a judicial review also in the form of preventive detention.

Are the activists now really taking a look at Hessen?

Apparently there are similar considerations.

Going where there are penalties follows the laws of the attention economy.

Pure burger

Political correspondent in North Rhine-Westphalia.

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Marlene Grunert

Editor in Politics.

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Timo Steppat

Correspondent for Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland based in Wiesbaden.

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Ruediger Soldt

Political correspondent in Baden-Württemberg.

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Markus Wehner

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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Even Greens, who support the actual goals, reject the methods in no uncertain terms.

When it comes to preventive detention, however, there is no such cross-party consensus.

A new wave of attention is associated with the debate about this instrument.

The criticism of preventive detention is sharp.

In Bavaria, people can be imprisoned for up to 60 days to prevent criminal offenses that have been announced – in the event of an extension.

Judges decide.

Of course, the heads of the "last generation", which are well organized, could have appealed against the judge's decision in Munich.

They didn't.

You speak of the detention in Munich as a "memorial" and stylize yourself as victims.

In Bavaria, the detention ended when the activists announced that they would take a break, i.e. that they no longer wanted to commit crimes for the time being.

origins in the fight against terror

So now Hesse.

The SPD parliamentary group leader in the state parliament, Günter Rudolph, warns against "not intensifying the existing potential for radicalization of the so-called 'climate activists' through alarmist rhetoric".

Whether in the SPD or the Greens - the rejection of the actions is extremely clear, but the skepticism about preventive detention is also great.

Rudolph warns that the drug should be used as sparingly and carefully as possible.

The German Association of Judges, the largest German representation of judges and public prosecutors, also recalls what preventive detention is about: "Preventive detention represents a significant encroachment on the fundamental right to freedom of the person," says Federal Managing Director Sven Rebehn of the FAZ Die Those affected would not be punished repressively for a crime that has been proven to have been committed, but taken into custody in order to prevent a future criminal offense or serious administrative offence.

"Constitutionally, this is only possible within narrow limits," says Rebehn.

The measure is subject to a “particularly strict proportionality test”.

The courts "examined very carefully in each individual case whether and for how long a deprivation of liberty for reasons of averting danger is essential and therefore justified".

In practically all federal states, the police laws provide for the instrument of preventive detention.

They usually have their origins in the early 2000s, at the time of the Islamist terrorist attacks.

Later they were adjusted.

That was the case in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2018.

At the beginning of the recent black-yellow government period, preventive detention during the amendment of the police law was one of the most controversial points.

Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) originally wanted to extend the detention from 48 hours to up to a month - with a view to the deportation of foreign threats at the express request of the then Integration Minister Joachim Stamp (FDP).