Feldheim: A hamlet swept by the winds of change

www.independent.co.uk
12 Apr 2012

Does the German village hold the key to a nuclear-free future? Tony Paterson reports from a backwater at the heart of a global debate

The burghers of Home Counties Britain would be horrified at the prospect of one of their villages being turned into a Feldheim. The tiny east German hamlet lies in the gently rolling countryside of Brandenburg, south-west of Berlin. It is a landscape of vast fields and thick pine forests, dotted with ancient 13th-century stone churches.

But Feldheim is out of step with its idyllic rural surroundings. Viewed from a distance the village of 37 houses resembles a set from the film version of the H G Wells sci-fi novel War of the Worlds. For around it are 43 giant wind turbines, many of them towering 300 feet above the ground.

The view down Feldheim's largely deserted main street is of whirling turbines. When the wind blows strongly from the east, the residents can hear the whooshing sound of 129 blades cutting through the air. Aesthetically displeasing it might be, but Feldheim, the first community in Germany to meet all its energy needs renewably, is the shape of things to come.

The village has been thrust into the limelight since Chancellor Angela Merkel's policy U-turn last year, when she ended Germany's reliance on atomic power. The move was a response to public anxiety about nuclear power that reached fever pitch during the crisis at Japan's Fukushima plant last year, when sales of personal Geiger counters rocketed in Germany.

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