The Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg visited Lützerath on Friday and sharply criticized the actions of the police in clearing the village.
"It's outrageous how the police violence is," said Thunberg.
The Aachen police chief Dirk Weinspach rejected the accusation.
"It is incomprehensible to me how she comes to her amazing assessment," he told the "Spiegel".
“She used most of her stay to speak to the press and make statements.
While almost next to her, very delicate work was being done to free activists.”
In the town on the edge of the Rhenish lignite mining area, which belongs to Erkelenz, the end of the evacuation that began on Wednesday was already evident on Friday.
The police said in the evening that there were no more activists in the houses or on the roofs of the buildings.
A tunnel with two activists and several tree houses still have to be cleared.
When the village is demolished, the energy company RWE wants to excavate the coal underneath.
While activists were carried out of the last building they occupied on Friday, the demolition of farmer Eckardt Heukamp's former farm had already begun.
A yellow banner with the inscription “1.5°C means: Lützerath stays!” was hanging on the courtyard wall, visible from afar – this wall has now been demolished.
The Heukamp-Hof had been seen in the background of many protest actions for years and had a correspondingly high symbolic value.
Thunberg toured the village and crater of the brown coal mine on Friday, holding up a sign that read "Keep it in the ground."
"It's appalling to see what's happening here," said Thunberg.
On Saturday she will take part in the planned rally for the preservation of Lützerath, she announced.
When governments and corporations work together in this way to destroy the environment and endanger countless people, the population must speak out and speak out.
"We want to show what people power looks like, what democracy looks like." The police are expecting around 8,000 participants at the rally.
Of the several hundred climate activists who had occupied Lützerath, only a few dozen were left on Friday.
The others had left voluntarily or been taken away by the police.
Two activists in a tunnel gave the police the biggest headache.
Chief of Police Weinspach climbed a little way into the shaft and then said that the rescue of the two people would have to be carried out by special forces from the fire brigade and the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW).
"I just think it's bad what dangers these people take on themselves," criticized Weinspach.
The construction is anything but safe.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz criticized parts of the protests.
“I used to demonstrate more often, too.
However, for me there is a limit that runs exactly where protest becomes violent," said the SPD politician of the "wochentaz".
Scholz did not accept the accusation that the development of the lignite deposits under Lützerath would jeopardize the climate goals: "This accusation is not true.
It's exactly the opposite: we make politics so that we can achieve our climate goals."
Habeck: "Lützerath is simply the wrong symbol"
Climate Protection Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) also showed little understanding for the protests.
“There are many good reasons to demonstrate for more climate protection, including against the Greens.
But Lützerath is simply the wrong symbol," Habeck told the "Spiegel".
The village is not the symbol for a continuation of the Garzweiler lignite mine in the Rhineland, but "it is the final line," said Habeck.
The coal phase-out in the local coal mining area is preferred by eight years to 2030, which was always the goal of the climate movement.
“We save five villages and farms with around 450 residents.
The Hambach Forest has been secured.
The agreement has halved the permitted amount of open pit coal.
But meanwhile there are rumblings at the party base of the Greens: By Friday morning, more than 2,000 Greens members had signed an open letter against the eviction.
Habeck and NRW Economics Minister Mona Neubaur are asked in the letter to stop the action immediately.
The "negotiated deal with the energy company RWE threatens to break with the principles of our party," it says.
The co-federal spokesman for the Green Youth, Timon Dzienus, warned of the Greens becoming alienated from the climate movement.
"Right now the Greens need the support of the climate movement," he told the news portal "t-online".
"The RWE deal doesn't help at all."
According to a survey by the ZDF "Politbarometer", a majority of Germans are against an expansion of the lignite mining areas, as is currently planned after the evacuation of Lützerath.
59 percent of respondents spoke out against such an expansion - 33 percent are in favor.
Above all, a clear majority (87 percent) of Green voters are against the project.
On the other hand, 60 percent of all respondents believe that greater use of coal-fired power plants to secure the power supply is correct.
36 percent are against it.