Drawing on his training as an electrical engineer, he has been helping citizens and local leaders understand the project, and what the alternatives could look like. “The government has to recognize they made a mistake,” Mr. Hossfeld said. “The question is how do we get them to do that?”

The government, in legislation speeding up the lines’ construction, said the public would have a part in the planning process. Last spring, citizens and organizations had a six-week window to lodge complaints, or propose alternative routes for the line. Residents of Petersberg, along a proposed power line path, did just that.

In response, Tennet, the company constructing the transmission line, suggested running the lines to the west of Fulda. Now residents along that route are demanding a chance to have their say.

At a recent information session in Grossenlüder, Christoph Thiel, project leader for SuedLink, was asked about the height of the towers. Other residents wanted to know why the line could not be run through the former “death strip” along the Cold War border between East and West Germany — now a protected nature reserve.

Still others asked why the cables could not be buried, instead of strung from towers spaced a quarter-mile apart. Mr. Hossfeld said he had raised that point during meetings with Fulda’s state and federal representatives. “We would prefer not to have SuedLink at all, but if we have to have it, then underground,” he said.

Tennet representatives said the law allowed for sections of the transmission line to be buried, and recognized that it would make the project more acceptable to many affected places. But the technology for buried cables is still developing, they said, and burying them would be more costly.

Many citizens questioned whether transmission lines from the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein to Bavaria in the south are really necessary at all — the most frequent question raised since the planning began in October 2013, Tennet said.