Methodological note. This text is based on primary Bundestag documents (20/6621, 20/6702, WD 4-3000-008/23), the Last Generation 2022 transparency report (cited in the Bundestag WD opinion), the IRS Form 990 data of the Climate Emergency Fund via ProPublica and Instrumentl, and the websites of the organisations named. The text separates two layers that are systematically conflated in public discourse: (1) the scientific-political question of the climate crisis, and (2) the structural question of who, with what money, organised what kind of activism. The first layer is not negotiated here. The second is the subject.
The climate crisis is a scientifically established reality. Last Generation was not its logical consequence emerging from the middle of an organised citizenry, but a US-co-financed activist movement, equipped with a German full-time apparatus, organised in at least three legally interlocked carrier associations, with around 2,200 members and 41 full-time staff funded with up to €1,300 per month from a “civic education” budget. Whether that was German civil society or an imported activist apparatus in NGO clothing is the structural question this text takes up.
1. The money pipeline starts in West Hollywood #
The Climate Emergency Fund (CEF) was founded in 2019 in West Hollywood, California. Three founders:
- Aileen Getty — granddaughter of Jean Paul Getty (Getty Oil, founded 1942), daughter of John Paul Getty II. CEF’s initial funding was $600,000 in its founding year; of which around $500,000 came from Aileen Getty herself (~83 % of the start-up capital) [1].
- Rory Kennedy — youngest daughter of Robert F. Kennedy Sr. (the US senator assassinated in 1968) and Ethel Kennedy. Documentary filmmaker (Moxie Firecracker Films). Clarification against frequent confusion: not Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
- Trevor Neilson — investor, several finance companies, World Economic Forum member. Left CEF in 2021 and publicly criticised the programme as having become “disruption for disruption’s sake” and “absolutely counterproductive” [1].
CEF is registered as a US 501(c)(3) non-profit in West Hollywood (EIN 84-2151545). The ProPublica non-profit database shows the annual total revenue [2]:
| Tax year | CEF total revenue |
|---|---|
| 2019 | $2,383,778 |
| 2020 | $1,452,905 |
| 2021 | $2,303,973 |
| 2022 | $6,052,641 |
| 2023 | $4,796,373 |
| 2024 | $5,637,020 |
In 2022 CEF funded 43 organisations worldwide with a total of $4.3 million [1][3]. Cumulative grants since founding through 2024: roughly $16.76 million to international “climate activism” structures.
CEF advisory board (as of October 2022): Geralyn Dreyfous (art patron), Sarah Ezzy (Aileen Getty Foundation), Shannon O’Leary Joy, Adam McKay (film director “Don’t Look Up”, joined September 2022 with a $4 million pledge), Abigail Disney (Walt Disney heiress). Executive director: Margaret K. Salamon.
A22 Network — the transnational coordination layer #
What CEF supplies in money, the A22 Network organises in action architecture. A22 was launched in 2022 as “a group of interconnected projects in a wild race to save humanity” [4]. Confirmed members: Just Stop Oil (UK), Last Generation (Germany, Austria, Poland, Italy), Renovate Switzerland, Dernière Rénovation (France), Stopp oljeletinga (Norway), Declare Emergency (USA), other branches in Australia, New Zealand, Sweden.
The Climate Emergency Fund describes itself on its own website as the “primary sponsor of the A22 Network” — primary-documented in the Bundestag’s Wissenschaftliche Dienste opinion WD 4-3000-008/23 [3].
The strategic architect of the A22 model is Roger Hallam, British activist and co-founder of Extinction Rebellion (2018) and Just Stop Oil. Hallam is not formally founder of A22, but its method-giver: sit-down blockades on main traffic arteries, media provocation, judicial acceptance of criminal proceedings as part of the strategy.
What of this actually arrived in Germany #
Here is the point that the media headline “Soros money for the climate gluers” misses: There was no direct CEF grant to the German Last Generation. That is not exoneration — it is the description of the construction.
From the Last Generation 2022 transparency report, primary-documented in WD 4-3000-008/23 [3]: CEF did not fund Last Generation itself, but a layered-above structure — the “Wandelbündnis – Gesamtverband für den sozial-ökologischen Wandel e.V.” (Berlin) — with around €50,000 for 2022, for the purpose of “non-profit civic education to support Last Generation”. From the Wandelbündnis funds then flowed into the action field of LG.
€50,000 for a year sounds small. But it is exactly the amount needed in Berlin to finance a full-time core trio that builds the logistics layer for a movement with €901,832 in donation income. The actual value of the CEF connection was not the money sum — it was the integration into the transnational A22 method and training network, which did not let the German offshoot emerge from the middle of the German climate debate, but as a coordinated national section of an internationally conceived action structure.
2. The three-tier carrier structure #
When a movement with 2,200 members, 41 full-time employees and €901,832 in annual income decides not to choose a legal form, that is a design choice, not negligence. From the Wissenschaftliche Dienste opinion [3]: Last Generation as a movement is legally a non-incorporated association or a GbR — without registration, without formal board structure, without liable persons. As such it is not exposed to organisational bans, loss of charitable status, or civil suits — all of which would apply if it were a registered association.
Instead there are three legally clean cloaks in which the movement dresses, depending on function:
| Carrier | Legal form | Function | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| elinor Treuhand e.V. (Berlin, GLS Bank) | e.V., not charitable | until March 2023, fiduciary group account for LG donations | WD 4-008-23, p. 13–14 [3] |
| KUEÖ gGmbH (Hamburg) | charitable GmbH | since March 2023 official donation recipient; founded June 2022 by LG activists; sole shareholder KUEÖ e.V. | WD 4-008-23, p. 14 [3] |
| Wandelbündnis – Gesamtverband für den sozial-ökologischen Wandel e.V. (Berlin) | e.V. (formerly “Frekonale”, VR 7811) | carrier of employment for full-time activists; recipient of CEF funds | WD 4-008-23 + OpenCollective [5] |
The practical effect of this architecture: donations land formally with KUEÖ (charitable, hence tax-attractive for donors). Full-time activists are paid by Wandelbündnis, because the alliance has a “civic education” mandate that fits the CEF cash-line title “civic education”. The fiduciary account at elinor was the operational layer for running expenses. Anyone wanting to sue “Last Generation” first has to decide which of the three associations — and all three are individually too small to bear a large damage claim.
That is not naivety. That is structure.
The trademark #
In October 2023 the trademark “Letzte Generation” was registered with the German Patent and Trademark Office, by the carrier association “Klima- und Umweltaufklärung für den Erhalt der lebenssichernden Ökosysteme e.V.” (KUEÖ e.V.). The legal entity thus holds exclusive rights to a term that functioned in public perception like a generic concept. A movement that formally is none holds the trademark rights to its own name.
3. The full-time activists #
From Drucksachen 20/6702 and 20/6621 and the repeated reporting in Tagesspiegel, Focus and Welt [6][7]: Via the Wandelbündnis, 41 persons were employed for “civic education” with a stipend of up to €1,300 per month. That is on a scale between unemployment benefit and minimum wage — just high enough to get by in Berlin (shared flat, vegetarian diet), just low enough to preserve the self-perception of “activist” rather than “employee of a campaign organisation”.
That self-perception was the product. The media narrative of “young people so desperate that they voluntarily glue themselves to streets” is harder to maintain with €1,300 stipend structures. It is a professionalised action movement in which the formal-volunteer shell and the actually-paid core are systematically kept blurred.
Sincerity or insincerity of the individuals is not the issue. The issue is the construction. The self-presentation as “citizen activism out of desperation” is structurally untenable for an organisation that holds a trademark, deploys three carrier associations and finances 41 full-time stipendiaries — regardless of whether those involved believe in the cause or not. Anyone paid by the Wandelbündnis is an employee, even if the contract is called “stipend” and the activity “civic education”.
4. The indirect state money — BMWK via elinor #
From Bundestag Drucksache 20/3097, cited in 20/6702 [8]: The Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK, then under Robert Habeck) funded the “Group Account Project” of elinor Treuhand e.V. with €156,420 through an innovation programme.
Discipline is required here. The BMWK did not fund Last Generation. It funded the concept of a fiduciary group account at the elinor association — an innovation funding project for “new forms of collaborative association work”. That Last Generation used this group account for years as its operational donation account is a second-order indirection and not a direct federal subsidy of LG.
But: a second-order indirection is also an indirection. The BMWK co-financed an instrument that served a highly political, police-known action movement as its operational layer. The separation between “we fund a concept innovation” and “we indirectly maintain the infrastructure of Last Generation” is legally clean, politically thin — and it was not offensively defended by the Federal Government in the Drucksachen reply, but rather routinely passed over.
5. The parliamentary asymmetry #
From the Bundestag Drucksachen the same pattern emerges as for AAS and Correctiv: The only faction that systematically attacks the LG financing structure parliamentarily is the AfD.
- Drucksache 20/6621 (28 April 2023): “On the role of foreign funds in the financing of climate protests and their effects on democratic competition” — minor inquiry by Hess, Baumann, Curio et al. (AfD). 11 questions. The corresponding Federal Government reply was not found despite active search in the DIP database — possibly filed under another document number or not answered. [9]
- Drucksache 20/6702 (9 May 2023): “Banning the organisation ‘Letzte Generation’” — motion by Brandner et al. (AfD). Six demands, including review of an organisational ban and “ceasing all funding”. [10]
- Bundestag WD 4-3000-008/23 (16 March 2023): “Tax treatment of initiatives using the example of the Letzte Generation alliance” — Wissenschaftliche Dienste, Department WD 4 Budget and Finance. This analysis is the central primary structural description used in this article. It was not commissioned by a faction, but produced by the Wissenschaftliche Dienste — and that is exactly why it is so good: no inquiry-suggestion, just the sober extraction of facts from the association registers. [3]
CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens, FDP and the Left have not, in this legislative period, lodged a comparably systematic inquiry into LG’s financing structure. The media outrage about LG actions — articulated across all the named factions — did not translate into a parliamentary structural inquiry. Again the same pattern: the symptoms (sit-down blockades) are criticised, the pipeline is not. The first is politically compatible; the second would only be if one were prepared to apply the same yardstick to one’s own funded NGO structures.
6. The displacement dynamic: foreign large donors co-shape the German climate discourse #
Whoever co-funds, co-defines. When the Climate Emergency Fund — funded in large parts from the assets of the Getty family (a US oil dynasty) and the Kennedy family (US political dynasty) — uses the A22 Network and the Wandelbündnis to maintain a German section whose actions are designed to push the Federal Government into faster climate legislation, that is more than “international solidarity”.
It is the co-shaping of the German climate-policy discourse by private US wealth that has never been on the ballot in any German election. Germans were never asked whether they wanted a US-co-financed action movement in their political landscape. In some cases they happily co-financed it (€901,832 in German donations in 2022 are real), in others less. The structural fact remains: the LG business model did not depend on German donor willingness alone — it depended on a transatlantic pipeline whose source was private billionaires in California.
This displacement is without mandate. It is without an election. It is also without significant parliamentary debate. It happened because the money was there, and because no one asked loudly what it was buying.
The piquancy of the inheritance line #
Aileen Getty is the granddaughter of Jean Paul Getty, whose wealth was built on Getty Oil — that is, the very industry whose CO2 emissions co-produced the climate crisis. An heiress of oil money funds, with significant means, an international action movement against fossil fuels. One can read this as belated reparation or as historical laundering — the facts allow both readings. What they do not allow is the reading that this is a politically neutral promotion of “civil-society engagement”. Whoever lets oil money influence oil policy is exercising influence — in whichever direction.
7. The strategic shift and the successor structures #
On 30 January 2024 Last Generation announced the end of “the chapter of gluing and street blockades”. The trigger was a mix of legal pressure (§129 StGB proceedings in Bavaria May 2023, raids with seized donation accounts), declining public resonance and an internally exhausted mobilisation base.
That was not a dissolution. It was a reorganisation. On 26 February 2025 LG announced its formal dissolution — and at the same time the emergence of two successor structures:
- Neue Generation (2025–): focus “against the Right and the Rich”. Actions including against Müllermilch (brand attack) and Tesla (paint actions).
- Widerstandskollektiv (2025–): more radical offshoot. In April 2025, documented tyre deflation on Tesla vehicles in Berlin and other property-damage actions.
Whether the CEF pipeline runs into one of the successor structures after the dissolution is not primary-confirmed. Structurally it is to be expected — the Wandelbündnis as CEF recipient continues, the KUEÖ system is intact, the A22 method architecture is transnationally unchanged. What has changed: the brand. What has probably remained the same: the pipeline.
8. What the structural picture means #
Last Generation was not a German civic phenomenon. It was a German section of a transnationally conceived action apparatus whose financial spark came from US private billionaires and whose operational structure was organised in three interlocked German carrier associations with 41 stipendiary full-time staff. The movement presented itself as “young people out of desperation”. Structurally it was a professionalised action brand with patent rights in its own name.
Anyone who confronts this with the scientifically established climate crisis or the democratic climate demand as a shield is confusing the issue with the apparatus that has appropriated it. The climate crisis is real. Activism is legitimate. Neither legitimises a construction in which US-large-fortune money and €1,300 stipendiaries together stage a German “movement” that has nothing in common with German movements except action geography. The one is a concern, the other is an apparatus. To distinguish the two is the precondition for taking the concern seriously without falling for the apparatus.
Last Generation was an imported action apparatus in movement clothing that pushed the German climate debate into an escalation tier that, without the US method transfer (A22, Hallam strategy context) and the US financial pipeline (CEF), would not have arisen in this form. Anyone who refuses to see that, because the topic “climate” is politically convenient, is not practising solidarity with the cause — he is providing cover for the apparatus that has taken the cause for itself.
The staff knows what they do #
Anyone employed at €1,300/month by the Wandelbündnis knew that this is an employment relationship, not a spontaneous citizen movement. Anyone representing the trademark as press spokesperson knew she represented a trademark. The usual defensive line “the activists are just engaged young people who want to save the world” no longer holds for an organisation with trademark registration, three-tier carrier structure and transatlantic pipeline. Those involved chose this construction — out of pragmatism, ideological agreement, or both. That is not a moral judgment. It is the sober observation that the usual naivety narrative does not carry under these facts.
The bypass of the population #
There was no democratic mandate path in which the population would have agreed to the construction “foreign private billionaires + transatlantic method architecture + 41 stipendiary full-time activists + three-tier carrier structure + trademark protection”. There was no election campaign in which it was on the ballot. There was only a combination of US money, German activists, well-organised logistics — and a population that had to take the consequences (sit-down blockades, police operations, criminal proceedings, climate-debate escalation) as given, without being able to co-decide on the construction.
That is precisely what structural analyses like this exist for: to make the construction visible and not let it pass as “citizen activism”.
The oil heiress and climate activism #
A closing point not polemically imputed to the story but inherent in it: the principal financier of the world’s most aggressive climate action movement is the granddaughter of an oil magnate. That is not contradictory — it is consistent with the sociology of “strategic philanthropy capital”, in which heiresses of large industrial fortunes use foundations to occupy themes that reinterpret or neutralise the historical source of their wealth. This is not necessarily cynical. It is also not necessarily altruistic. It is a structural property of modern large-wealth deployment that shapes the discourse without being democratically legitimised.
Whoever reads Last Generation as “climate activism out of the middle of the population” reads it wrong. It was a well-financed, transnationally networked, professionally structured action project with a German branch. That is what it was, that is documentable, and exactly that disappeared in the media coverage systematically behind the “desperate youth” narrative. Anyone who knows the structural facts and continues to pass on the movement narrative is not lying — they are choosing not to make a piece of reality visible. Structural analyses like this one exist precisely so that reality is not left to the communications of those staging it.
Sources #
[1] InfluenceWatch, Climate Emergency Fund — Profile and Background. influencewatch.org/non-profit/climate-emergency-fund
[2] ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, Climate Emergency Fund (EIN 84-2151545) — IRS Form 990 Data. projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/842151545. Plus Instrumentl aggregation: instrumentl.com/990-report/climate-emergency-fund
[3] Bundestag, Wissenschaftliche Dienste — WD 4-3000-008/23 of 16 March 2023: Tax treatment of initiatives using the example of the Letzte Generation alliance. bundestag.de/resource/blob/944492/… — the central primary structural description. Contains the LG transparency report 2022 figures, the carrier structure, the CEF–Wandelbündnis funding.
[4] Climate Emergency Fund — A22 Network overview. climateemergencyfund.org/a22. Plus Wikipedia EN “Last Generation (climate movement)”.
[5] OpenCollective, Wandelbündnis – Gesamtverband für den sozial-ökologischen Wandel e.V. — profile and transaction overview. opencollective.com/wandelbuendnis
[6] Tagesspiegel (January 2023): coverage of the LG transparency report 2022 incl. the 41-full-time-position information.
[7] Focus (various 2023): “Offering €1,300 for full-time gluing — climate activists recruit with employment contracts”. focus.de (paywall).
[8] Bundestag Drucksache 20/3097 (Written Question 12, Federal Government reply): BMWK funding of the elinor group account in the amount of €156,420. Cited in Drucksache 20/6702, page 2.
[9] Bundestag Drucksache 20/6621 (28 April 2023): Minor inquiry Hess, Baumann, Curio et al. (AfD) — On the role of foreign funds in the financing of climate protests. dserver.bundestag.de/btd/20/066/2006621.pdf
[10] Bundestag Drucksache 20/6702 (9 May 2023): Motion Brandner et al. (AfD) — Banning the organisation “Letzte Generation”. dserver.bundestag.de/btd/20/067/2006702.pdf
[11] Letzte Generation, Transparency report 2022 (own publication, primary-evaluated in WD 4-008-23 [3]). letztegeneration.org/transparenzbericht
[12] dpa Faktenfinder (21 Nov 2022): confirmation of the CEF connection — “US organisation funds Letzte Generation”. dpa-factchecking.com
Read more — the Media Criticism series on elizaonsteroids.org #
- Part 5: Amadeu Antonio Foundation: Money, Intelligence, History
- Part 4: Correctiv: Money, Boards, Secrets
- Part 3: Eight Days in January: Farmers’ Protests vs. “Secret Plan”
- Part 2: The Reporter, the Awards, the Money: What’s Behind the Correctiv Investigation
- Part 1: Three Sentences, Two Courts: What the Correctiv Rulings Say
Related money-flow investigations:
Part 6 of the Media Criticism series. Research cut-off: 23 April 2026. Drucksachen 20/6621, 20/6702 and WD 4-3000-008/23 are linked above; the verification of the funding amounts and carrier structures is reproducible.
