The projected rebuilding of Stuttgart’s central train station has prompted major protests, with demonstrations regularly attended by tens of thousands of people. A brutal police operation that left several protestors hospitalised helped catapult the protests into the focus of media attention. The article reconstructs the history of the project and the development of the protests in order to formulate general reflections on social movement politics and the relationship between spontaneity, political strategy and the autonomy of extraparliamentary movements.