Responsibility for a fire early Tuesday morning at construction site in Berlin has been claimed by activists as an attack on Germany's Deutsche Bahn railway operator, an Austrian construction company and US carmaker Tesla, Der Spiegel newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The fire, which affected construction cranes and signal cables belonging to Deutsche Bahn, was one of many that broke out during the night of Monday to Tuesday near a key bridge in Marzahn, a district of the German capital.
Tram and car traffic on the Landsberger Allee was restricted for over an hour as firefighters worked to put out the blaze. Passenger and freight traffic between Biesdorfer Kreuz and Ahrenfelde, in the direction of the town of Ahrenfelde, was also affected, according to police.
Group targeted Tesla, Deutsche Bahn ...
Berlin police said on Tuesday they were working on the assumption of arson and that they were investigating a political motive.
On Tuesday, a group of activists claimed the incident as an attack on Deutsche Bahn, Austrian construction company Strabag and, especially, US carmaker Tesla, which wanted to expand its factory in Grünheide, about 30 kms southeast of Berlin, along with its CEO Elon Musk.
Der Spiegel reported on Wednesday that the group claimed responsibility for the incident in an anonymous letter on the German webpage of Indymedia - a collective of news sites founded and maintained by a global activist network. It added that the incident was as an attack on Strabag which, it said, was involved in the expansion of Tesla's operations in the area.
"Two of their construction cranes in Berlin-Marzahn are now unusable," the activists wrote. "We opened their control cabinets and set them on fire. At the same time, we placed two incendiary bombs in cable shafts of the freight railway line."
Activists up in arms over the expansion of Tesla's 'Gigafactory'
Their aim, they explained, was to cause signal failures and delays in freight traffic, especially to nearby CEMEX and Heidelberg Materials.
"Because of the expansion of the Tesla Gigafactory, another 50 hectares of forest in Grünheide near Berlin have to be cleared," according to the activists, who explained that this forest "has to make way for a Deutsche Bahn freight station for transporting millions of Tesla cars."
They indicated further that while it is Strabag, among others, that is building the freight station, they also wanted to hit Tesla.
"No company represents technocratic fascism as much as Tesla," they wrote.
The activists' main target is what they see as an alliance formed by US President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the German far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, led by Alice Weidel.
'Alliance of technofascists'
"Trump-Musk-Weidel form the alliance of the technofascists, who are giving a face to the new patriarchal and colonial totalitarianism," the group claimed, issuing a call to "fight the technofascists and Tesla in the streets."
"Anyone who drives a Tesla is aligning themselves with Trump-Musk-Weidel," the group said. "Those who drive a Tesla at least indirectly support Starlink, the AfD, the colonisation of Mars, military logistics in wars, video surveillance on the streets, greenwashing, destruction of nature and fascist and patriarchal propaganda. Therefore: get Teslas out of the world."
The Tesla Gigafactory, the only one in Europe, opened in Grünheide in 2022. In 2023, the company announced plans to expand the factory to increase production capacity to one million cars a year.
According to Der Spiegel, this week's fires were not the only recent action of this type in the area. Less than a fortnight ago, a railway line was hit by arson, and responsability for that incident was also claimed in a letter.
