Germany's First Collapse Camp: Climate Activism's New Direction

N.B. This magazine-length article (3,500 words) was created by Claude.ai in ten minutes with its new 'Research' capability. It found and used 152 sources.

The human organizers of Kollapscamp have confirmed the report's accuracy. Scully said: "I think it perfectly catches the moment of something new having its coming out, still being undefined and 'under construction' but already creating new energy, expectations & chances." Tadzio gave it a "thumbs-up."

I asked for this report, and I'm publishing it, because I think the Anglophone "collapse community" needs to know about the sophisticated thinking and action being undertaken in other countries. They are way ahead of us! We need to learn from them. In particular, the place of the "collapse movement" within the struggle against fascism deserves our attention.

--DB

The Kollapscamp, held August 28-31, 2025, in Kuhlmühle, Brandenburg, marked the first major gathering of Germany's emerging "collapse-awareness" movement, drawing nearly 1,000 participants who gathered to confront a provocative premise: climate catastrophe is already irreversible, so how do we act with solidarity and justice within collapse rather than futilely trying to prevent it? This four-day event represented a strategic pivot in German climate activism, moving away from "appellative" approaches—asking governments for change—toward building resilience networks, learning disaster response skills, and preparing communities for cascading crises. The sold-out camp, organized by veteran climate justice activists including Tadzio Müller and Cindy Peter ("Scully"), offered over 100 workshops ranging from emergency medical training and self-defense to collective grief processing and autonomous energy systems. While controversial even among participants, the event signals a significant evolution in how some German activists are responding to the widening gap between climate science urgency and political action, attempting to channel climate despair into practical solidarity rather than paralysis.

A strategic shift from prevention to preparation

The Kollapscamp emerged from a profound disillusionment within German climate activism. Despite mobilizing 1.4 million protesters for climate strikes in 2019—the largest such demonstrations in history—activists have watched coal phase-out deadlines extend to 2038, new gas infrastructure approved, and climate targets routinely missed. The camp's central concept, "Kollapsakzeptanz" (collapse acceptance), represents not resignation but strategic reorientation. As organizer Cindy Peter explained, "Collapse means that the steady deterioration of daily life as we know it becomes permanent." Rather than abandoning activism, this framework reframes it: the question shifts from "Can we still stop climate change?" to "How do we create spaces of solidaristic, feminist, queer life even in a darkening future?"

Tadzio Müller, the camp's most prominent organizer, embodies this evolution. A political scientist with a PhD from the University of Sussex, Müller co-founded Ende Gelände (Here and No Further), one of Europe's most effective direct action climate groups, which mobilized thousands to occupy coal mines annually. But by 2024, he had publicly declared: "I have been a climate activist for 15 years and I can say that the battle is lost. We're so fucked it's ridiculous." His trajectory mirrors that of many participants—moving from mainstream climate activism through increasingly disruptive tactics (Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, Letzte Generation) to what he calls "Klimakampf 2.0," focused on justice within catastrophe rather than preventing it. His newsletter "Friedliche Sabotage" (Peaceful Sabotage) and his 2024 book "Zwischen friedlicher Sabotage und Kollaps" (Between Peaceful Sabotage and Collapse) helped articulate this emerging perspective, setting the intellectual groundwork for the camp.

The movement draws heavily on French "collapsology," particularly Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens' influential work "Comment tout peut s'effondrer" (How Everything Can Collapse), published in German in 2022. Their analysis of interconnected crises—climate, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, economic vulnerability—creating conditions for societal breakdown resonated with German activists increasingly skeptical that their governments would act in time. The collapse-awareness framework gained traction through spaces like the Klima-Kollaps Café, online gatherings where activists processed their climate grief and strategized about acting effectively in cascading crises.

Nearly 1,000 people converge in Brandenburg

The Kollapscamp took place at Kuhlmühle, a leftist collective and alternative housing project in a forest by a lake in North Brandenburg, between Berlin and Hamburg. The site—former Bundeswehr barracks converted to ecological use since 2011—provided appropriate infrastructure for what organizers envisioned as launching a new "solidarity collapse movement." The event sold out weeks in advance with approximately 600 paying ticket holders, but total attendance reached nearly 1,000 when including organizers, workshop facilitators, medical staff, and the awareness team.

The participant demographics surprised even the organizers. While typical climate camps skew young, the Kollapscamp's average age exceeded 40, with the oldest participant at 85 and the youngest in the children's area. Many attendees were professionals—engineers, physicists, doctors, psychotherapists—alongside activists from Ende Gelände, Extinction Rebellion, Letzte Generation (Last Generation), forest occupation movements, communes, and antifascist groups. Significantly, many participants were new to activist camps entirely, asking basic questions about accommodation and food, suggesting the collapse-awareness framing reached beyond the usual "climate bubble." International participants came from Finland, Turkey, the United States, Switzerland, Netherlands, Austria, and other countries, with approximately 50 attending an "Internationals" meeting.

The organizing team itself represented a cross-movement coalition unprecedented in German climate activism. Beyond Müller and Peter (a former Ende Gelände member who worked in European Parliament member Carola Rackete's office), the organizing process involved activists from major climate justice groups, agricultural communes, the old ecology movement, new antifascist movements, and Berlin collapse discussion groups. Working groups handled Process, Location, Discourse, and Program, attempting to create what they described as a queer-friendly, anti-fascist, feminist space that would launch the first political gathering where "collapse acceptance" was the dominant position.

Over 100 workshops span emotional work, practical skills, and theory

The camp program featured more than 100 workshops and sessions organized into three main strands, scheduled across Friday and Saturday with five or more parallel offerings at any given time. The diversity and specificity of workshops distinguished the Kollapscamp from typical activist gatherings or climate camps.

Approximately one-third of the program focused on emotional and psychological work—collective processing of climate grief, anxiety, and despair. Psychotherapist Claritta Martin led a workshop on "Trauer und Dankbarkeit" (Grief and Gratitude), while another session offered "Sterbebegleitung für die Moderne" (Hospice Care for Modernity), based on Vanessa Machado de Oliveira's work on decolonizing colonial behaviors. Participants could attend workshops on activist burnout, self-care in crisis situations, using anger as a source of strength, breathing meditation in forest settings, and a three-day intensive on "Tiefe Anpassung" (Deep Adaptation). This emphasis on emotional labor as central rather than peripheral to activism reflected the movement's recognition that climate reality generates overwhelming feelings that movements must hold rather than repress.

The practical skills strand emphasized concrete disaster preparedness and community resilience. CADUS e.V. offered a two-day "Climate Emergency Response Technician" course, while Swedish activist Pär Plüschke from Preppa Tillsammans (Prepping Together) taught "Stop the Bleed"—training on stopping catastrophic bleeding including gunshot wounds, acknowledging the increasingly violent context activists face. Other medical workshops covered first aid, dental care (how to seal teeth), and self-production of vital medicines and hormones for gender-affirming care. The Solidarische Klimahilfe (Solidarity Climate Aid) led sessions on "What to do in a flood?" featuring testimonies from survivors of the catastrophic 2021 Ahrtal floods that killed over 180 people in western Germany.

Infrastructure workshops addressed autonomous energy supply using solar panels, alternative communication through ham radio when internet and phone networks fail, growing vegetables on balconies, food preservation for crisis times, building composting toilets, and organizing neighborhood power during outages. Self-defense training was prominent, including a two-day course on "How to Defend a Pride March?"—reflecting growing concern about protecting LGBTQIA+ communities and other marginalized groups from escalating right-wing violence. Multiple self-defense sessions were reserved specifically for queer and FLINTA* (women, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, trans, and agender) participants.

Theoretical and analytical workshops explored collapse philosophy from Indigenous and anarchist perspectives, reading circles on science fiction, discussions on nihilistic versus radical hope, and sessions on deep-sea mining and extinction processes. A two-day simulation game called "Organizing in Crisis" allowed participants to practice post-disaster community organizing. Cultural events included opening and closing parties powered by solar panels, the closing party featuring "all-gender cruising spaces," choir singing, bar and waffle stands, and swimming at the nearby lake. Communal meals were provided by the Küfa (people's kitchen) run by Food for Action collective.

Core themes: solidarity, anti-fascism, and "post-appellative" politics

Several interlocking themes defined the Kollapscamp's political orientation, attempting to articulate what acting justly in collapse conditions might mean. The foundational concept of "collapse acceptance" was carefully defined to counter assumptions about apocalyptic thinking or mass death scenarios. Organizers emphasized that collapse means the gradual deterioration of daily life becoming permanent—not a Hollywood-style sudden catastrophe but cascading systems failures, intensifying disasters, breakdown of reliable infrastructure, and erosion of social stability. This framing drew on disaster sociology showing that people predominantly respond to crises with mutual aid rather than panic or violence.

The concept of "solidarisches Preppen" (solidarity-based prepping) emerged as a central alternative to right-wing survivalism. While reactionary prepping emphasizes individual survival through weapons, bunkers, and hoarding, solidarity prepping builds community resilience through social networks, shared skills, collective resources, and mutual aid infrastructure. The focus extends particularly to vulnerable populations—homeless people, disabled individuals, migrants, queer people—who will be disproportionately affected by climate disasters and social breakdown. This approach draws on anarchist mutual aid traditions, Indigenous community practices, and the actual patterns documented when disasters strike: neighbors help neighbors, communities self-organize, solidarity emerges.

Anti-fascism threaded through the entire event, reflecting activists' assessment that climate collapse and rising fascism constitute inseparable aspects of the polycrisis. Workshops on defending Pride marches, protecting demonstrations from right-wing violence, and building security for marginalized communities acknowledged what organizers called fascism as "permanent social catastrophe" and "very practical threat." This connects to broader German political context: the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) gaining significant support, increasing violence against activists, and the February 2025 indictment of five Letzte Generation organizers under criminal organization laws. The camp's emphasis on protecting vulnerable communities positions anti-fascist defense work as core collapse preparation.

The framework of "post-appellative politics" articulates the strategic shift most explicitly. For decades, German climate activism has predominantly asked those in power for change—through demonstrations, petitions, political lobbying, public education campaigns. Even disruptive tactics like road blockades by Letzte Generation aimed to pressure governments into policy shifts. The collapse-awareness movement argues this approach has demonstrably failed despite unprecedented mobilization, and that activists must stop primarily asking for change and instead build alternative structures directly. As workshop descriptions emphasized: "We don't ask nicely anymore, we do things ourselves." This doesn't mean abandoning all engagement with institutions but reorienting primary energy toward creating resilient communities, mutual aid networks, and solidarity infrastructure that can function regardless of state action.

Climate justice within catastrophe rather than climate justice preventing catastrophe emerged as the ethical framework. One organizer summarized: "We no longer fight against, but within the climate catastrophe." This involves learning from Global South communities already experiencing climate collapse, prioritizing those most affected by crisis, and ensuring that preparation doesn't replicate existing inequalities. The movement confronts the reality that wealthy Germans have far more capacity to prepare than refugees, disabled people, or those living in poverty, necessitating explicit attention to justice and solidarity rather than individualist survival.

Notable outcomes, controversies, and internal debates

The post-event statement from organizers declared with evident relief and excitement: "Kollapscamp was the first political space, at least in the German-speaking world, but we believe also in the European context, where almost 1,000 people came together and where 'collapse acceptance' was the dominant political position. We were finally not accused of 'alarmism', not once!" Multiple participants described the profound experience of finding others who shared their assessment of climate reality. The official statement quoted one man saying "he had been depressed and frustrated with the world for 40 years and then suddenly we came along and created a place where people want to honestly deal with collapse and tackle it, what a zest for life that gives him." Some participants compared the experience to coming out—the relief of acknowledging what they'd felt but feared expressing.

Yet significant tensions and debates emerged throughout the four days. The terminology itself generated controversy, with many participants skeptical of the word "collapse" as sounding too apocalyptic or potentially attracting doomers rather than activists. During one panel discussion, Tadzio Müller's statement "We are not a climate movement" sparked boos and uproar, revealing disagreement about the relationship to traditional climate activism. A young woman challenged that no one was discussing CO2 reduction anymore, leading to heated exchange about whether mitigation efforts remained relevant if collapse is inevitable. Debates erupted over the ethics of having children when societal breakdown appears likely.

The opening ceremony explicitly addressed questions about leadership and Müller's prominent role, with him symbolically stepping back from a leadership position, though his influence remained substantial throughout the event. This reflected broader questions about charismatic leadership in horizontal movements and whether collapse-awareness requires particular spokespeople or should emerge more collectively. Organizers acknowledged in their self-assessment that they had failed to bring adequate international and especially BiPoc perspectives into workshops, that they had unsuccessfully attempted to connect with Soulèvements de la Terre from France or organizers from Valencia flood response, and that the movement needs better "pedagogy of collapse" and improved capacity for constructive criticism.

The camp reached financial break-even through donations, with tickets priced at €60 regular, €80-100 solidarity pricing, and €30 or free for those unable to afford standard rates. Remaining funds will be directed toward follow-up projects, though specific next steps beyond continuing discussions and local network building remained unclear at the event's conclusion.

Broader context: evolution and crisis in German climate activism

The Kollapscamp cannot be understood outside the trajectory of German environmental and climate movements over decades. Germany has one of the world's most developed climate activism ecosystems, emerging from the powerful anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s-80s that ultimately led to nuclear phase-out and the founding of the Green Party. Climate-focused activism intensified through the 2000s with climate camps targeting coal infrastructure, then exploded in 2019 when Fridays for Future mobilized 1.4 million Germans in a single day—the largest climate demonstration in history. This unprecedented youth mobilization, led by figures like Luisa Neubauer, seemed to herald a political breakthrough on climate.

But the policy response disappointed activists profoundly. Germany's coal phase-out remained scheduled for 2038 despite activists demanding 2030. The Green Party, entering government as junior coalition partner in 2021, was seen as compromising core principles on issues from highway construction to fossil fuel infrastructure. This disillusionment fueled increasingly disruptive tactics by groups like Letzte Generation (Last Generation), which conducted 276 road blockades in Germany in 2022 alone, glued themselves to streets and artwork, threw paint on buildings, and disrupted airports. While these actions generated enormous media attention, public backlash was severe, with activists facing intensive criminalization including raids and criminal organization charges.

By 2024-2025, multiple converging factors accelerated the shift toward collapse-awareness. The November 2024 collapse of Germany's "traffic light" coalition government over climate and energy policy, followed by snap elections in February 2025 installing a more conservative CDU/CSU-SPD coalition under Friedrich Merz, signaled to activists that political pathways for ambitious climate action were narrowing. Germany's economy stagnated for two consecutive years. The far-right AfD gained significant ground. Climate impacts within Germany intensified—the 2021 floods that killed over 180 people, increasing heatwaves and droughts, forests dying and becoming carbon sources rather than sinks. Internationally, the polycrisis became undeniable: climate disasters accelerating globally, the war in Ukraine, pandemic impacts, economic instability, democratic backsliding.

The degrowth movement provided crucial intellectual infrastructure for collapse-awareness thinking, though the two remain distinct. Degrowth advocates planned reduction of production and consumption, transitioning to post-growth economies centered on social and ecological wellbeing. Germany hosts active degrowth academic and practical communities, with events like the Alt-Shift Festival in August 2025 (a seven-day degrowth festival) and ongoing initiatives in community-supported agriculture, commons projects, and municipal-level experimentation. While degrowth envisions planned transformation, collapse-awareness accepts that transformation may be forced and chaotic, requiring different preparation strategies. Significant participant overlap exists between degrowth spaces and the collapse movement, sharing values of solidarity, anti-capitalism, and commons-based organizing.

The February 2025 reorganization of Letzte Generation, which split into "Neue Generation" (broader democratic focus) and "Widerstandskollektiv" (continued direct action), reflected growing recognition within disruptive climate activism that their approach had reached tactical and strategic limits. Many Last Generation activists attended the Kollapscamp, exploring whether collapse-awareness frameworks offered more sustainable approaches to continued activism without the burnout, criminalization, and public hostility that characterized 2022-2024.

Significance within German and European activism

The Kollapscamp represents a potential inflection point in climate activism, though whether it launches a coherent ongoing movement or remains a moment of reflection is uncertain. Its significance operates on multiple levels.

Strategically, it attempts to resolve the tension between scientific reality and activist practice that has generated immense frustration and burnout. By accepting that preventing climate catastrophe appears increasingly unlikely given current political trajectories, the movement aims to redirect energy toward building resilience and solidarity infrastructure that functions now and intensifies as crises escalate. This could mobilize people who feel paralyzed by the gap between climate science and political response, offering frameworks for meaningful action without requiring belief in probable success.

The emotional honesty of collapse-awareness distinguishes it from previous climate activism phases. Rather than repressing grief, fear, and anger to project optimistic public faces, the movement creates space to acknowledge overwhelming feelings while channeling them into solidarity and preparation. This recognition of emotional labor as central to movement sustainability addresses a major source of activist burnout. The predominance of participants over 40 suggests the framework resonates particularly with those who have weathered decades of environmental activism watching climate negotiations fail repeatedly.

The coalition-building potential is substantial. By bringing together veterans from Ende Gelände, Extinction Rebellion, Letzte Generation, forest occupations, communes, degrowth initiatives, antifascist movements, and LGBTQIA+ organizing under a shared collapse-awareness framework, the movement creates unusual cross-pollination. Traditional silos between different activist communities and approaches could dissolve in shared recognition of cascading crises requiring integrated responses.

However, significant risks accompany collapse-awareness framing. Critics worry it could demobilize people who might otherwise engage in prevention-oriented activism, become a form of privileged defeatism disconnected from those already surviving multiple crises, or be coopted by reactionary forces offering authoritarian responses to breakdown. The movement's emphasis on local resilience and mutual aid, while valuable, leaves unclear how it addresses systemic power relations or engages with large-scale political struggle. The tension between "post-appellative" politics and complete disengagement from institutions remains unresolved.

The Kollapscamp also raises questions about collapse-awareness as potentially self-fulfilling. If activists with the skills, networks, and energy to push for systemic change instead focus primarily on preparing for breakdown, does this abandon populations dependent on institutional responses and accelerate the very collapse they accept as likely? Movement participants would argue that continuing unsuccessful prevention strategies wastes scarce activist capacity, that preparation and continued resistance are not mutually exclusive, and that building alternative infrastructure constitutes politically meaningful action challenging existing power relations.

A movement finding its footing amid cascading crises

The gathering of nearly 1,000 people in Brandenburg for four days of disaster training, collective grief work, and solidarity network building represents German climate activism's attempt to reckon honestly with both the scale of planetary crisis and the apparent failure of decades of advocacy and mobilization to generate adequate political response. Whether "collapse acceptance" ultimately proves mobilizing or demobilizing, whether it successfully maintains connection to broader justice struggles or becomes insular survivalism, and whether it builds lasting infrastructure or remains a moment of catharsis depends on developments in coming months and years.

What is undeniable is that the Kollapscamp articulated something many activists were feeling but lacked language and community to express: that the climate movement's foundational assumption—that sufficient mobilization could still prevent catastrophic warming—increasingly conflicts with both scientific assessments and political reality. The movement's answer, emphasizing solidarity, practical skills, emotional resilience, and justice within crisis rather than justice preventing crisis, offers one path forward for activists confronting this brutal gap. As organizer Cindy Peter stated: "The collapse movement gives me drive: Yes, the situation is bad, but we can hold out solidaristically against it and improve it."

The event received limited mainstream media coverage in Germany—extensive reporting in left-leaning outlets like taz and nd-aktuell but notably absent from major newspapers like Süddeutsche Zeitung or Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and from national television news. This suggests the collapse-awareness framework remains primarily within activist and alternative media spheres rather than breaking into broader public discourse. Whether it remains a niche perspective or gains wider traction will depend partly on how future climate disasters unfold in Germany and Europe, how political responses continue disappointing or exceeding activist expectations, and whether the movement successfully develops compelling narratives and visible projects beyond the initial gathering.

The Kollapscamp concluded with participants dispersing to their communities, carrying skills from emergency medical training and self-defense courses, connections to solidarity networks spanning Germany and beyond, and a framework for understanding their activism not as failing to prevent catastrophe but as preparing to act justly within it. The camp launched what organizers hope becomes "the next (and possibly last) long cycle of leftist struggles"—activism for justice, solidarity, and care under conditions of cascading ecological and social breakdown, without illusions about restoring stability but also without surrendering to despair.

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Relevant Links:

• Kollapscamp (English page).
• Tadzio's blog: Friedliche Sabotage (Peaceful Sabotage), in German.
• Scully's blog: disrupt!, in German.