THIRTY YEARS OF BUNDESTAG PRESENCE: A TALLY OF THE …

Located in Washington, D.C., the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies is an independent, non-profit public policy organization that worksin Germany and the United States to address current and emerging policy challenges. Founded in 1983, the Institute is affiliated with The Johns HopkinsUniversity. The Institute is governed by its own Board of Trustees, which includes prominent German and American leaders from the business, policy, andacademic communities.

Building Knowledge, Insights, and Networks for the Future

14AICGSGERMAN-AMERICANISSUES

THIRTY YEARS OF BUNDESTAGPRESENCE: A TALLY OF THEGREENS’ IMPACT ON THE FEDERALREPUBLIC OF GERMANY’S POLITICALLIFE AND PUBLIC CULTURE

Andrei S. MarkovitsJoseph Klaver

AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR CONTEMPORARY GERMAN STUDIES THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

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The American Institute for Contemporary GermanStudies strengthens the German-American relation-ship in an evolving Europe and changing world. TheInstitute produces objective and original analyses ofdevelopments and trends in Germany, Europe, andthe United States; creates new transatlanticnetworks; and facilitates dialogue among the busi-ness, political, and academic communities to managedifferences and define and promote common inter-ests.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword 3

About the Authors 5

Introduction 7

The Greens By the Numbers 11

The Four Pillars Defining Green Identity 17

Changes in Green Appearance: An Adopted Habitus? 33

Conclusion 37

Notes 41

In September 2013, German voters will go to the polls and elect their next chancellor. Around the country—in Lower-Saxony, Bavaria, and Hesse—state parliaments will also be elected. As they cast their ballots, somemay recall that the German political constellation was not always so colorful. While the CDU/CSU, SPD, andFDP have been in existence since the Federal Republic’s founding, the Green Party will celebrate a milestonein 2013: its thirtieth anniversary in the Bundestag.

To say that the Greens have been successful in the past thirty years would be an understatement. They’vebeen the junior partner in a red-green coalition on the federal level, partnered in numerous coalitions at thestate level, and won their first state majority in 2011 in Baden-Württemberg. At the political level, the Greensdemonstrated their electability and appeal and have reshaped the political landscape.

So, too, have they affected policy. The central tenets of the Green Party—environmentalism, equality, paci-fism—are embedded in German society today in a way that they were not thirty years ago. The Green Party’scommitment to the environment has led to a country leading in solar technology and phasing out its nuclearpower; its mandated gender equality has led even the most conservative parties to promote women in theirranks; and its calls for pacifism have sharpened the debate on the role of German military. The party has leftan indelible print on the country at large.

On the occasion of the Green Party’s thirtieth anniversary in the Bundestag, Andrei Markovits and JosephKlaver examine these and other issues within the party, and within German politics. The following essaydiscusses how the Green Party built its “brand” and, in so doing, ushered in a fundamental change in Germanpolitics and society. It is a useful example of the way in which new political parties enter the scene and exactchange in Germany—a situation that continues with the emergence of the Pirate Party.

This essay is part of AICGS’ focus on the 2013 German federal election and the broader political system.The Institute is grateful to Andrei Markovits and Joseph Klaver for sharing their insights, to the Heinrich BöllStiftung in Washington, DC and the University of Michigan for their generous support of this publication, andto Jessica Riester Hart for her work on its editing and production.

Jack JanesPresident, AICGS

FOREWORD

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ThirTy years of bundesTag presence

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Andrei S. Markovits is currently an Arthur F. Thurnau and the Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor ofComparative Politics and German Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. A graduate of ColumbiaUniversity where he received all five of his post-secondary degrees, Markovits has been teaching andresearching many aspects of German politics, society, and culture since 1974 when he commenced his careeras an academic. This has led him to associations with a number of leading American universities, as well asvisiting appointments at German, Austrian, Swiss, and Israeli institutions of higher learning. Markovits’s manybooks, articles, and reviews have appeared in 15 languages. In 2007, the Leuphana University Lüneburgawarded Markovits with an honorary doctorate. Five years later, he became the recipient of the Officer’s Crossof the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (First Class) (Bundesverdienstkreuz erster Klasse),one of the highest honors bestowed by the Federal Republic of Germany on any civilian, German or foreign.Markovits has been involved with the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) sinceits inception.

Joseph Klaver received his BA from the University of Michigan in the spring of 2012. He majored both inPolitical Science and German Studies, in which he took courses with Andrei Markovits. He just completed afour-month assignment for an NGO in Salzburg, Austria and will continue his studies in the areas of interna-tional relations with a special emphasis on Germany and Europe.

01inTroducTion

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INTRODUCTION1

On 6 March 2013, it will be thirty years since quin-tessential representatives of the European counter-culture, major players in the venerable New Left, thevery embodiment of the famed sixty-eighters—inshort, perhaps the most powerful symbolic vanguardof the conclusive finality of the hegemonic bourgeoisculture that dominated all public life in capitalist coun-tries since the Victorian age—danced the night awayat the Stadthalle in Bad Godesberg celebrating theirtriumphant entry into the Bundestag while invoking anew age in the political topography of the FederalRepublic of Germany and—by extension—in all similarplaces of advanced industrial capitalism ruled by aliberal democratic order.2 The Age of Aquarius hadfinally departed from the campuses of Berkeley,Columbia, Paris, and the Free University of Berlin—not to mention the stages of New York’s Broadwayand London’s West End—and entered triumphantly aplatform that really mattered: that of the very heart ofpolitical life of one of the most important actors in theglobal order of the modern world, the Bundestag ofthe Federal Republic of Germany, Europe’s economichegemon, repeated and self-congratulating worldchampion of exports, a self-proclaimed economicgiant that insistently touted itself—contrary to allreality—as a political dwarf. Incidentally, while in virtu-ally all previous instances of the Left’s history, inno-vations emanated from Europe and were thentransplanted both in theory and practice to the UnitedStates, in the case of the New Left—an all-importantingredient for our story—the reverse was clearly thecase. No German (or European) New Left would haveemerged without key aspects (both strategic andtactical) of America’s Civil Rights movement,including freedom riders, sit ins at lunch counters,and Martin Luther King, as well as its black powervariant (Malcolm X, the Black Panthers), and, ofcourse, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, with the latter

receiving particular pride of place. One simply cannotunderstand the beginnings and core characteristicsof the European New Left without names like JoanBaez, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, the San Franciscosound of The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, JanisJoplin and her pals in Big Brother and the HoldingCompany, and Quicksilver Messenger Service, toname but a few. The electoral victory of Sunday, 6March 1983 rendered this motley group of politicizedhippies into uncontested debutants in—nobody daredsay it quite yet—the ESTABLISHMENT!

Horror of horrors! The counterculture had entered thebastion of the mainstream. How could this be? Whatcosts and compromises would such a gigantic stepexact from this world of young people, these quin-tessential baby boomers that perceived their veryidentity, their core, as the vanguard of the anti-estab-lishment (even if it was not quite the actual revolutionanymore)?

To be sure, the iconography of the actual entranceinto the hallowed halls of the Bundestag on 29 March1983, still bespoke a clear desire on the part of thesetwenty-eight new members of parliament to be seenas decidedly anti-establishment. There was WalterSchwenninger with a long hand-woven peasantsweater alongside Dieter Drabiniok and Gert Jannsenwith their flowing locks and wild beards; MarieluiseBeck appeared with a pine tree pockmarked by acidrain slung over one shoulder; Petra Kelly was alsothere, carrying a large bouquet of fresh flowers; andthen there was Gabriele Potthast sporting a tuxedo-like quintessentially male garment in a clear attemptat gender bending and thus confronting the estab-lishment with its square sense of sexuality and itsboring bourgeois habitus and mores, not to mentionits evil sexism. The Green entrance into the world of

governmental ministries two years later in Hessenalso had a distinctly anti-establishment flair: JoschkaFischer taking his oath as environmental minister injeans and Nikes contrasted strikingly with HolgerBörner, administering the oath of office to Fischer,dressed in a dark business suit—de rigueur for suchoccasions for German politicians or any member ofthe establishment. The dark suit with the accompa-nying white shirt and the not-too-colorful necktieconstituted the accepted uniform for men in theirpublic appearances prior to the arrival of the coun-terculture’s troops on the big stages of public life inthe late 1970s and early 1980s.

So what of this? What remains, to speak with ChristaWolf’s well-known dictum of Was bleibt? It isprecisely this issue that we address in our presentwork. Our argument is as follows: On the whole, theGreens’ imprint has been considerable both on thenarrower confines of German politics and also—perhaps more important still—on the wider discourseand demeanor of German public life. Put simply,things that have become the norm in the quotidianhabitus of contemporary Germany once hailed froma cultural milieu and a political reality that existed onlyin odd urban spaces and featured almost exclusivelyin metropolitan as well as cosmopolitan places suchas Frankfurt and Berlin, remaining confined to thefringes of German life. They were characteristicsmerely of Germany’s counter-cultural ghetto. Nolonger! To be sure, there had to be major costs to thepurity of this milieu’s identity by its entering the largermainstream. In gaining societal relevance and politicalimportance, this world had to alter many of its much-cherished existential icons that defined its very beingin a self-sufficient ghetto with little overall societal,political, economic, and even cultural relevance.Gaining such relevance has always exacted compro-mises in a much-invoked purity that, of course, alsomasquerades as a clear sense of exclusivity. But weargue that the Greens’ lengthy process of attaininggenuine societal, political, economic, and culturalrelevance—and thus shedding their original and exis-tential pristineness—has on the whole been a veryworthwhile, indeed successful, endeavor.

We argue that, despite some obvious levels of moder-ation that one can clearly interpret as compromises,perhaps even cooptation, the contemporary Greens

have advanced a degree of progressive values uponGerman society and culture that might perhaps differin the original purity so dearly upheld by their erstwhilepredecessors and early activists of the late 1970sand early 1980s but that have, in turn, attained amuch greater relevance in contemporary Germanpolitical life. Or put differently, we submit that in thepast thirty years the Greens have successfully insti-tutionalized in Germany’s mainstream a brand ofprogressive politics that thirty years ago was at besta fringe occurence consumed and followed by polit-ically marginal sects. The Greens have becomeestablished without being the establishment. Some oftheir political leaders now wear suits without havingbecome such. The Greens have created a cross-overappeal that they simply did not have thirty years ago.

We intend to develop this theme of depicting theGreens as having had a major effect on the discourse,content, and shape of key elements of German poli-tics and central areas of the country’s public life in therest of our work presented in this publication. One ofthe Greens’ immense successes, we argue, consistsof their having entered the big leagues of Germanpolitics, with a clearly defined and immediatelydiscernible brand which, if anything, they havesucceeded to augment and legitimate well beyondtheir very own confines, thereby having their brandbecome a common phenomenon. Even though manyGreens will most assuredly not appreciate ouranalyzing their successes by utilizing analogies frommarketing—what blasphemy, what travesty—we doso not to affront them or their sensibilities, butprecisely because we believe that this analogy worksbest in terms of depicting our overall argument.Unless one explicitly confines one’s playing field toniches—which the Greens most certainly neverintended to do given the large, indeed huge, topicsthat they viewed as essential to their very existenceand identity—any brand’s success will be defined bythe scope of its reach, recognition, influence, andimitation which, we argue, still remains one of themarkers of success. There can be no doubt whatso-ever that key aspects of the Greens’ original brandhave attained wide acceptance and legitimacy andhave indeed become much appreciated and well likedbrands of German politics and public life.

To be sure, this dissemination and acceptance was

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not solely due to the Greens’ savvy and marketinggenius. Of course, there were crucial processes ofmutual give-and-take, of the interaction betweenagency (the Greens) and structure (the Germancontext in which they operated and existed) thatrendered the Greens’ original brand so common inGermany in the course of the past thirty years.Context always matters. Thus, for example, there canbe no doubt that the Greens’ deep commitment toecological improvement and purity found a particularlyfertile ground in the long-held German view of naturedating back to the Romantic period of the early nine-teenth century, indeed well beyond in history. Pleasenote: We are not arguing that there is a stringent orinevitable linear relationship between the saliency thathas been accorded to nature in the mainstreamGerman narrative and the Greens’ commitment toecology. But there can be no doubt that the Greensin Germany had an easier path to political legitimationon this dimension than did their brothers and sistersacross the Rhine in France, for example, or most otherparts of Europe for that matter. The same is true ofpacifism and peace; by dint of Germany’s immenselybellicose history, particularly in the first half of thetwentieth century, and the negative consequencesthat this bellicosity had wrought, peace attained acentrally important rallying point across virtually allideological lines for German politics after 1945 thatit did not replicate to a similar degree in otherpowerful countries among Germany’s Europeanneighbors, notably Britain and France. The topics thatwere to form the Greens’ very core were, on an impor-tant structural level, not totally alien to the commonGerman narrative. So clearly context mattered in facil-itating but not creating the Greens’ prolific presence.

Bottom line: the Greens’ branding has beenimmensely successful. To claim being peaceful andenvironmentally progressive have become coreGerman values that the country proudly touts along-side the industrial success of its Mittelstand, itsfrugality, and its export prowess. While few use theterminology of Modell Deutschland these days, wewould argue that these core Green values constitutethe very core of precisely such a structure thatembodies a valuable currency of differentiation andcredentialing. Germans well beyond the Greens liketo boast with these values which they deem not onlymorally appropriate, even superior, but which they

also correctly perceive as providing them with anadvantageous profile in the increasing globalizedcompetition of goods and services, as well as culturesand values. In contrast to rival forms of capitalism,Germany’s is ecological, peaceful, inclusive,moderate, considerate—in short a greenish kind ofcapitalism, a capitalism with a human touch and face,if certainly not an outright “green capitalism” or theGreens’ capitalism.

We will present our argument in the following mannerin this work: First, we will highlight how the Greens’brand has become common by citing an array ofnumbers that attest to the Greens’ normalcy as wellas importance in contemporary German politics andpublic life, how the Greens have become solidly insti-tutionalized and “normalized,” how they have becomefully established without being fully the establishment.We will then look in some detail as to how the fourpillars that defined the very core of the Greens’ beingand brand—ecology, feminism, peace, base democ-racy—have been internalized by the Greens’ politicalrivals and other players in German politics, none ofwhom would have done so on their own or from thegoodness of their heart but were made to choosesuch steps of incorporation precisely because thesuccess of the Greens’ brand compelled them to doso. We will concentrate on each of these four pillarsand give ample examples to demonstrate how thecontent of the Greens’ core became a major part, ifnot the same core, in the quotidian world of theGreens’ opponents and rivals. In this segment of ourwork, we will look at the world external to the Greensto analyze the changes that they have wrought in thethirty years since their electoral success on 6 March1983. We then turn our gaze to the internal world ofthe Greens and highlight some of the changes thathave occurred to them in this time span.

And last, in the third segment of our report, wesubstantiate our statement of the Greens wearingsuits but not having become such by providing snip-pets of the Greens’ contemporary habitus, appear-ance, and demeanor that we contrast to that of theirpredecessors who entered the hallowed halls of theBundestag on the twenty-ninth of March in 1983.We will offer some overarching thoughts in our briefconclusion.

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02The greens by ThenuMbers

Over the past thirty years the German Green Partyhas developed from a self-proclaimed “anti-partyparty” into a trusted coalition partner at all three levelsof government: federal, state (Land), and local. Dueto this self-proclaimed outsider status, integral to theGreens’ very identity, the development of the Greensfrom a loosely connected milieu of antinomianprotesters and system critics into a full-fledged parlia-mentary party was necessarily tumultuous, featuringmuch conflict over the future of the party. Despitethis somewhat chaotic development the Greens have,at this point, established themselves as Bundestagregulars, as well as extended their institutional pres-ence throughout Germany and the world.

The Greens’ electoral ascent began with their firststatewide electoral victory, which came in Bremen in1979 (up until that point the Greens’ most notableelectoral accomplishment came through capturing alarge enough share of the vote in Hamburg and LowerSaxony to prevent the entrance of the FDP into thoserespective parliaments).3 The Greens won four seatsin that election in Bremen; today they control nearly250 seats throughout the various state parliaments ofthe Federal Republic. The Bundestag election of1983 saw the Greens enter the federal parliament forthe first time, winning 5.6 percent of the vote andreceiving twenty-eight seats.4 This event embodied ahuge accomplishment and undoubtedly played a rolein pushing the Greens toward becoming in part aconventional party. From the party’s precursors repre-sented by the various new social movements dottingthe Federal Republic’s political landscape of the late1970s, to its early days as a party in the first fewyears of the 1980s, the passionately conducteddebate as to whether creating a party was the appro-priate means to reach this milieu’s desired ends orwhether the structures of movement politics would

prove better to doing so was conducted around thepivot of conventionality, which most Greens at thetime spurned. Still, a sufficient number argued that theattainment of the Greens’ aims was well worth the riskof playing with the dangers of conventionality whichaccompanied any parliamentary road to politicalpower. But since parliaments, for better or worse,constituted the main loci of effecting policy in liberaldemocracies, one had to enter them to have a mean-ingful voice in such political formations.

With their ascension to the Bundestag, the Greensgained much in the way of media exposure. Howeverit was the large sums of money that the Germangovernment provides parliamentary parties thatproved particularly valuable. With the exception ofthe setback that was the post-unification election of1990—the Greens failed to reach the 5 percentthreshold in the former West, gaining their eight seatsdue only to their surpassing the electoral threshold inthe former GDR5—the Greens have graduallyincreased their seats in Bundestag elections over thedecades, achieving their best result in 2009 whenthey received 10.7 percent of the national vote,amounting to sixty-eight seats.6

As its electoral fortunes improved and its internalstructures and rules evolved, the Green Party wentfrom occupying a virtually exclusively oppositional rolein German politics to serving in governing coalitions.This development was especially notable given theturbulent history of the issue of entering governmentswithin the Green Party membership and the afore-mentioned contentious intra-movement and intra-party debate about the potential dangers of becomingrespectable and conventional. During the 1980s theGreen Party’s two wings, on the one hand the moremovement-oriented, ideologically radical, conceptu-

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The greens by The nuMbers

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ally purist and strategically uncompromising “funda-mentalists” (Fundi); and on the other hand the muchmore realistically and practically oriented “realists”(Realos); clashed frequently over the issue ofwhether the Greens should pursue a path of funda-mental opposition, or if a path toward becoming anavailable and acceptable player in coalitions withother parties—becoming koalitionsfähig, to use theappropriate German term—was more prudent.

The Greens first served in a coalition in 1985 in thestate of Hessen. In many ways, this event broke theban and barrier to entering the path toward parlia-mentary politics, which in the meantime has becomethe norm.7 The Greens served in ten separate coali-tions across Germany at the state level beforeentering their first government on the national level.In 1998 the first red-green government was formedat the federal level, with Joschka Fischer serving asforeign minister and vice chancellor. This coalition ofthe Greens and the Social Democratic Party (SPD)survived the 2002 elections and lasted until 2005.This coalition featured a wide array of accomplish-ments, ranging from the reformation of Germany’scitizenship standards to efforts to limit and end theuse of nuclear energy in Germany, both issues, oneneeds to add, that emanated from the core of theGreens’ political identity and belief structure. Whileclearly having to compromise with their senior coali-tion partner, the SPD, and while suffering a defeat atthe hands of the FDP’s power in the Bundesrat,Germany’s important and potent upper chamber inthe legislature, there can be no doubt that the intro-duction of such fundamental changes in the verycenter of Germany’s political identity occurred to agreat degree on account of the Greens’ initiativesand perseverance. Thus, as became so often thecase in red-green coalitions, here, too, it was the tailthat wagged the dog instead of the other wayaround.

During the summer and early fall of 2012, at the timeof this writing, there are red-green coalitionsgoverning four German states: Bremen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Baden-Württemberg, and Rheinland-Pfalz. The coalition in Baden-Württemberg isespecially interesting because it represents the firstGreen-led government at the Land level in the historyof the Federal Republic.8 The Greens received 24.1

percent of the vote in the Landtagswahl in 2011,more than doubling their previous result.9 Thisoutcome was large enough to make them the secondstrongest party in the Landtag, where they eventuallyformed a green-red government, thus making it thevery first time that the Greens were not the juniorpartner in a coalition (not counting arrangements onthe local and municipal level) and catapultingWinfried Kretschmann to becoming the first Greenminister-president in German history.10 Events suchas these were unthinkable in the halcyon movementdays of the Green Party of the late 1970s and early1980s, back when they claimed much of their iden-tity as an “anti-party party.” What would have beenunthinkable nary three decades ago has mutated intocomplete normalcy and conventionality in today’sGermany as well as Europe.

Poll data show a substantial increase in variousmeasures of ecological consciousness among theGerman populace. There exists ample evidence thatGermans as a whole desire to protect the environ-ment. These sentiments have—not coincidentally, wesubmit—grown concomitantly with the increasingpopularity of the Green Party.11 While reformist shiftsin such attitudes and sentiments cannot be attributedsolely to the newfound presence and popularity ofthe Green Party—after all, it is possible, indeed evenprobable, that these value changes were in fact theimpetus for the growing popularity of the Green Partyin the first place—the interaction between these two(surrounding environment influencing party and partyinfluencing surrounding environment) have createda symbiotic entity that created a new politicaldiscourse and reality in Germany as a whole whichhas, in the meantime, become the norm. Between1986 and 1992 the percentage of Germansdescribing environmental protection as an “urgentproblem” rose 9 percentage points, from an alreadyvery high 80 percent to the well-nigh virtual totalityof 89 percent.12 Similar increases occurred with pollquestions that were worded slightly differently, e.g.,“Is the protection of the environment important toyou?” which witnessed an increase from 91 percentto 94 percent between 1989 and 1991.13 In otherwords, worries about the environment have attaineda veritable and uncontested totality in contemporaryGermany. Expressing any disregard for the environ-ment would be downright unpatriotic, un-German,

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beyond the pale of accepted discourse and thought.One simply cannot be anti-environment in today’sGermany. Being pro-nature is an uncontestedcommon place that borders on uniformity. Impressivestuff indeed for a numerically small party!

Even in areas of Germany where the Greens havebeen only marginally competitive electorally, theynonetheless have a distinct institutional existence.The national presence of the Greens, as well as theunited front that the party provides by dint of standingfor such highly-cherished values as the environmentand peace, is all the more notable given the diffuseand divided history of the party in which united frontsof any sort were virtually anathema. The proliferationof citizen action groups in Germany—in 1972 therewere approximately 1,000 of such groups, by 1977that number had increased to 50,000—helped createthe milieu that would eventually foster and nurture thedevelopment first of the West German Green Partyand subsequently of the Green Party in the newGermany.14 While the party’s movement characteris-tics inevitably declined with its concomitantsuccesses in electoral politics and institutional pres-ence, they did not atrophy and continue with a healthydose of intra-party pluralism. Yet, it is the Greens’core brands that have lent the party its competitiveedge in the crowded space of the German politicalmarket. By being identified with these highly valuedmarkers, this motley party actually presents whatamounts to a successful united front.

Currently, the Greens have more than 400 county ordistrict associations (Kreisverbände) and hundredsmore municipal and local formations (Ortsverbände)throughout Germany that form the organizationalfoundation of their party. Interestingly, and so tellingof the Greens’ very being in terms of their profoundcosmopolitanism and their (at least initially) uncon-ventional approaches to politics, the proliferation ofthese green institutions even extends to the UnitedStates. In 2008 a Green local, an Ortsverband, wasformed in Washington, DC, by a group of Germanslooking to mobilize other Germans living in theWashington, DC, area to vote in the 2009 Bundestagelection, talk German politics, organize green picnics,view Die Feuerzangenbowle,15 and engage in othersocial activities.16 At least as far as we can tell, thisis the first such party organization to be formed

outside of Germany and is a remarkable step for anypolitical party to make.17 This is also a telling exampleas to how the Greens in general have become insti-tutionalized in the conventional and “normal” mannerwhile also maintaining their historical commitment tothe salience of an organizational structure anchoredin their commitment to grass-roots democracy(Basisdemokratie). Despite the DC Ortsverband’sobvious connection to the national party back homein Germany—the website for the AmericanOrtsverband utilizes a template that is repeatedconstantly throughout all of the party’s websites for allof its Ortsverbände—the idea of an outpost of aGerman political party in America whose goal is toincrease awareness about German politics amongex-pat Germans has a distinctively Green and thusdemocratic feel. Moreover, as our colleague StevenMilder, an expert on the early days of the Greens andGermany’s anti-nuclear protest movements, informsus, the idea for such a structure has an impressivegenealogy since, according to Milder, the late PetraKelly, one of the early Green leaders with particularties to the United States, had expressed wishes forthe Greens to establish some sort of outpost in theUnited States to establish dialogue with members ofcomparable milieus in this country. The Green move-ment has evolved from a loose-knit cultural and polit-ical milieu into a conventional, but also substantial,participant at every level of German government, witha broad institutional base that blankets all of Germany.

While a glance at membership rolls of most politicalparties will serve as a reasonable proxy for their overalldevelopment (be it expansion, contraction, or steadi-ness), the situation with the Greens is somewhatmore complex. This stems from the party’s (and themovement’s and milieu’s) history as an “anti-partyparty,” and its skepticism, if not actual aversion andoutright hostility, to becoming institutionalized andnormalized as a party. Thus, from their very begin-ning, the Greens have consciously (almost program-matically) not been a member-seeking party.Consequently, their most significant gains in partymembership have come—tellingly, and perhaps evenfaute de mieux—during key moments in the party’shistory: their unification with Bündnis ‘90 in 1993,their forming of a red-green government on thefederal level in 1998, and the combination of thedebate about the extension of the continued viability

and production of Germany’s nuclear energy industry(Laufzeitverlängerung) and the Fukushima nucleardisaster of 2011. It was these exogenous events,rather than the party’s active engagement in anymembership drives, that buoyed the Greens’ member-ship across the board.18 The Greens currently havenearly 60,000 members. With this number, they areapproaching both the FDP’s and Die Linke’s member-ship tally, which the Greens are expected to surpassin the next few years.19

In 2011, the Greens were the only party currentlyserving in the Bundestag to gain members, decidedlygood news for a party that—by its detractors—issometimes portrayed as representing a bygone eraand caricatured as nothing more than a sixty-eightermilieu party merely embodying an outdated and irrel-evant “scene” (Szene).20

Perhaps few indicators reveal a party’s arriviste (notto use the more dreaded “established”) nature inGerman political life than sporting a foundationwhich—though nominally independent from saidparty—clearly belongs to its organizational, opera-tional, and ideological purview. Like most other struc-tures related to the party, the Heinrich Böll Stiftung,the Green Party’s foundation, has also expandedtremendously since its inception in 1997 when itreplaced the Stiftungsverband Regenbogen.21 TheFoundation now has offices in each German stateand twenty-nine offices in foreign countries, from“expected” and “conventional” cities such asWashington, DC, Paris, and London, to more “exotic”venues such as Ramallah, Santiago, Cairo, andBangkok. In addition to these offices, the Foundationconducts activities in dozens more countries (sixty intotal).22 In 2008, the Stiftung presided over a budgetof about €45 million, up from €36 million in 2004—approximately the same amount of money that theparty itself had at its disposal.23 Education is animportant aspect of the Foundation’s goals and tofurther this end the foundation provides approximately1,000 university and PhD students with scholarshipsevery year.24 The Heinrich Böll Stiftung vastlyincreases the institutional presence of the Greensboth within Germany and internationally. It has beenthe party’s unofficial standard bearer and the equallyunofficial but highly effective disseminator of itsvalues.25 But any visit to this fine institution’s head-

quarters in one of Berlin’s trendiest and hippest areasvisually reveals the Green Party’s current character-istic of being in the establishment with not being quiteof it: men and women in roughly equal numbersdressed in casual clothes and conveying the appear-ance of social scientists at any of Europe’s orAmerica’s large research universities scurrying abouta hyper-modern, impressive-looking and anything butmodest edifice sporting cutting-edge office tech-nologies. The whole thing reflects the milieu of a big-city architectural firm on casual Fridays—or that of asociology department on any day.

Party politics in developed democracies is no meanfeat. Indeed, it is big business no matter how aversethe Greens and others of similar political persuasionsmight be to the usage of such a near-blasphemousterm. It very well fits the Greens’ cultural milieu andtheir political legacy to view money as a necessaryevil, as basically dirty and corrupting, and certainly amedium in which they partake by necessity anddefault though never by choice and volition. But theresimply is no way around the obvious fact that in allliberal democracies parties need big money to run bigcampaigns, staff their apparatuses, and coordinateother party activities. Similar to other aspects of theirexistence, the budget and income of the Green Partyhave expanded significantly over time. In 1983, thefirst year Die Grünen entered the Bundestag, theGreens had a total income of DM 19,757,967.26 Fora fledgling parliamentary party this was a lot of money.Before switching to the euro, the Greens’ highestincome in a single year was DM 56,976,167 in1998—the year in which they entered a federal coali-tion for the first time.27 In 2010, the Greens achievedtheir highest income with €31,240,990.28 While it isnotable that the former “anti-party party” operateswith some serious cash, the origins of this money aretelling as well. In 1983, for instance, of the approxi-mately DM 19.8 million that the Greens received,upward of DM 11 million came as reimbursementsfrom the government, nearly 2 million marks derivedfrom membership dues, and approximately DM150,000 from the contributions of the party’s parlia-mentary delegates’ salaries, the so-calledMandatsträger, representing 69.5 percent, 9.5percent, and less than 1 percent of the party’s totalincome, respectively.29 These numbers are markedlydifferent than their equivalent values in 2010 when the

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Greens received €11,415,217 from the governmentas so-called “staatliche Mittel,” €6,597,014 asmembership dues, and €6,979,775 fromMandatsträger—this time representing 36.5 percent,21.1 percent, 22.3 percent of their total income,respectively.30 These increases, especially in theproportion of the budget comprising money donatedfrom the party’s legislators and parliamentary repre-sentatives, demonstrate how the Greens have bene-fitted even materially from their institutionalization intomainstream German politics. To conclude thissection: Even a cursory look at a few telling numbersconveys the Greens’ well-ensconced presence inGermany’s political and public life. By any measure ofa party’s successful institutionalization in Germany—the quotidian presence at the local, state, and federallevel, be it in the world of administration and bureau-cracy on the one hand, and representation andgoverning on the other—the Greens have become asolidly anchored presence in Germany with no indi-cations whatsoever of any weakening, let alone disap-pearance. In our assessment, there is simply no otherway to categorize such a tally than a decidedsuccess.

03The four piLLars defininggreen idenTiTy

Ecology

Ecology is the most conspicuous and arguably themost essential of the four pillars of the “post-materi-alist” value structure that has come to define the veryidentity of the German Green Party. The mere factthat the party is not named “the Doves,” “theFeminists,” or “the Democrats,” but “the Greens,”amply demonstrates the prominence of nature andthe environment as primus inter pares compared tothe other three pillars that have been so essential tothe Greens’ very existence: peace and pacifism;women and feminism; and grass-roots democracy.The origins of this emphasis are complex and requiresome explanation. Much has been written about thecontributions of the “German traditions of romanti-cism, love of nature, and anti-modernism” as majorcontributors to nature’s and the environment’scentrality to the Greens’ identity, including by one ofthis work’s authors.31 The Green ideal of ecologyhas a “salience of a political tradition which has advo-cated similar demands in the past, although frequentlyin completely different contexts.”32 Indeed, as notedat the outset of this publication, while a clear rela-tionship has existed between nature’s centrality inGerman thought and politics and the Greens’successful embracing of these concerns, the noveltywith which the Greens approached them created avariance that in many cases trumped the extant over-laps. In other words, despite the already heightenedlevel of environmental concern defining a baseline inGermany that arguably was more pronounced than inother advanced industrial democracies of the 1970s,the Greens have nonetheless transformed the rolethat the environment plays in German politics as wellas expanded ideas and sensibilities about the type ofregulations required to protect it. The Greens havealso turned the environment into an issue that moti-

vates voters across the political spectrum. No longerare ecological concerns merely the bailiwick of radicalecologists. Indeed, through their strenuous effortsand their continued engagement on behalf of thisissue, the Greens were able to transform an amor-phous but extant baseline affection for nature thatwas so widespread in Germany into an enduringcommitment to a world defined by solid policies andsound management on behalf of nature’s protectionand the larger related complex of sustainability.

Regardless of the previous environmental conscious-ness of the German citizenry, the Greens certainlyraised the prominence of the environment as a polit-ical issue. They succeeded in forging vague sympa-thies into concrete steps of politics andadministration, not bad for a party that—certainly at itsbeginning and early years of its activities—was oftenderided for its excessive emotionalism and inability toresolve issues in a rational manner. The Greens’success in this realm was so compelling that otherparties had to follow suit and imitate them, proving yetagain that no flattery is greater than imitation. Asnoted by Markovits and Gorski in The German Left,“Every party, including the CDU, CSU, and FDP, hasbeen devoting much attention to ecology as a criticalissue […] Germany’s stringent recycling law […] is aconsequence of the Greens’ influence on the publicdiscourse and ecological awareness of the Germanpopulation […] Being anti-ecological in contemporaryGermany has become nothing short of blasphe-mous.”33 Nothing defines the Green brand moreemphatically to Germans and Europeans—indeedaround the world—than their commitment to theprotection of the environment. The associationGreens = Ecology has become ironclad andimmutable. All brands crave such automatic associa-tions. The Greens have attained it in spades, an

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The four piLLars defining greenidenTiTy

obvious marker of success.

In particular, the jettisoning of all nuclear options as alegitimate and viable source for energy, which theGreens were the first among any political party inGermany to bring into the public eye, has received aspecial salience, even urgency, in German politics.Since the early 1980s the Greens, with their demandof eventual and unconditional departure from nuclearenergy, the vaunted Atomausstieg, have maintained astrong anti-nuclear stance that has formed the coreof their identity. At its outset, this met with fierceopposition by all other Bundestag parties.34

However, by 2000 the red-green government passedthe “Agreement Between the Federal Governmentand Energy Companies,”35 which began the processof Germany’s gradual departure from nuclear energy,thus fulfilling one of the Greens’ most long-standinggoals.36 In 2010, the CDU/CSU-FDP governmentfurther modified the Atomgesetz to extend the life ofGermany’s existing nuclear power plants, the so-called “Laufzeitverlängerung.”37 The fact that theright-of-center government saw fit only to lengthen—rather than confirm, let alone improve—the operationsof Germany’s nuclear power plants is telling. Thegovernment could have abandoned Atomausstieg inits entirety. However the enduring strength of anti-nuclear sentiment, even among the conservativeconstituencies of the CDU/CSU/FDP government,precluded this possibility. Thus, what was oncecentral to the identity of a group of post-materialisthippies and formed their core demand in politicshad—in the course of two to three decades—mutatedinto the absolute mainstream of German politics andpublic discourse.

The institutionalization of ecology and sustainability inthe broad arena of German politics is amply demon-strated by the way in which the other political partieshave incorporated ecology into their own programs,beliefs, and values. A paper published by severalyoung CSU ecology experts—“Umweltpolitiker”— in2012 showcases this institutionalization.38 The docu-ment is titled “Out of Responsibility for theCreation”39 and advocates that “all of Bavaria shouldbecome climate neutral, Bavaria should only investmoney using social, ethical, and ecological criteria,and Germany should reinstitute the solar program ofthe red-green administration.”40 In the meantime, the

paper has already been approved by the relevantdistrict council (Bezirksvorstand) of the CSU.41 Thetypes of issues discussed in this CSU documentaddress traditionally green goals, while also makinguse of distinctly green vocabulary, displaying onceagain the influence the Greens have exerted over thepolitical status quo, including the very party that onecould safely argue to have occupied the Germanpolitical spectrum’s very opposite from the Greens.

By incorporating longstanding green ideas into theirown ideologies, other parties can destabilize thestatus of the Green Party as the sole protector of theenvironment and ecology by undermining the Greens’claim to be the only advocates for this crucial cause.Unlike in the market, where brands can safeguardtheir originality and authenticity via various copyrightlaws and other protective measures, such is notpossible in the political marketplace where the coop-tation of an opponent’s viable ideas—its brand ineffect—is commonplace. It is then left to the progen-itor of the original brand to fight for its authenticity infront of the voters and hope that they will recognize itas such, then reward the progenitor and punish theimitator. Political markets—unlike their economiccounterparts—provide absolutely no protection toinnovators and purveyors of originality. Indeed, it isprecisely this free-for-all that embodies arguably oneof the key hallmarks of what it means to be a liberaldemocracy rather than some kind of dictatorship.

During the coalition negotiations between the FDPand the CDU/CSU in 2009, there was considerabletension over the cultivation of MONS810, a type ofgenetically modified corn within Germany, with theCDU and CSU—especially the latter—wanting to banit.42 Of course, the Greens have long opposed genet-ically modified food products and have demandedstrict labeling laws for foods that contain geneticallymodified ingredients, among other policies thatpromote traditional agriculture and food production.The Greens have consistently opposed policies thatsupport mechanized agribusiness.

Renate Künast, former leading candidate(Spitzenkandidat) of the Green Party, respondeddismissively to the various instances of topic theft orThemenklau, arguing that parties such as the CDUand CSU only pay lip-service to green ideals, but fail

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to follow through with green legislation. In otherwords, the Greens’ rivals only copied the shape of theGreens’ demands without wanting their actualcontents. Understandably, the Greens lobbed manyaccusations of failed authenticity and lack of sincerityat their political rivals, none more pronouncedperhaps than their derision of Chancellor AngelaMerkel’s perceived penchant for taking photos in frontof glaciers while attending climate summits.43 Politicaltheater or not, the fact that these parties recognize thesalience of the environment, specifically saving it, asa political issue is a testament to the premium that hasbeen placed on the appearance of being pro-envi-ronment in all of German politics and publicdiscourse, which—and few can doubt this—was firstarticulated by the Greens. Being openly dismissive ofenvironmental concerns is tantamount to politicalsuicide in today’s Germany. Nobody vaguely saneand with any kind of political ambition would speak illof the environment. Being green on this dimensionhas become tantamount to being a good citizen, agood German, a good European.

Another example of the continued salience of ecolog-ical thinking is evident in the German political estab-lishment’s reaction to the nuclear catastrophe inFukushima, Japan. Days after the disaster, politiciansfrom both the Greens and the SPD were criticizingthe CDU/CSU-FDP government regarding theLaufzeitverlängerung.44 Almost overnight, AngelaMerkel reversed her decision regarding the govern-ment’s previous policies concerning Germany’spower plants by outlining her new policy of Atom-Moratorium, which in essence committed itself tohave the Federal Republic be rid of nuclear energy asa source of power within a decade.45 If this does notconstitute a decided victory for the Greens, we do notquite know what would.

Regardless of the 180 degree change in policy(maybe even in heart) on the part of the Germangovernment, the aftermath of the nuclear disaster inJapan saw the popularity of the Greens skyrocket inopinion polls. After the earthquake and ensuingtsunami, the Greens polled as high as 23 percent invarious so-called “Sunday query” (Sonntagsfragen)polls, which were accompanied by the much moreimportant and impressive results in several state elec-tions.46 We have already alluded to the result in

Baden-Württemberg, but the Greens achieved simi-larly remarkable victories in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Rheinland-Pfalz. In the former, theGreens attained 8.7 percent after failing to meet the5 percent hurdle in 2006.47 The improvement inRheinland-Pfalz was more impressive still with theGreens more than tripling their previous tally bywinning 15.4 percent of the vote.48 These resultstestify to the continuing significance of nuclear andenvironmental politics in the Federal Republic as wellas to the public’s identification of it with the Greens,particularly in periods of crisis. Just as Chernobylhelped the Greens’ cause both in their legislativepresence as well as in their other political and socialactivities throughout the late 1980s, so, too didFukushima enhance the Greens’ standing in Germanpolitics and public opinion almost exactly twenty-fiveyears later. As with all brands, authenticity attains thegreatest salience in periods of doubt and insecurity.

Perhaps even more important than these electoralvictories, at least symbolically, were the conse-quences of the coalition negotiations between theSPD and the Greens in the aftermath of the electionin Baden-Württemberg. Having done exceptionallywell in the election, garnering upward of 24 percentof the vote, the Greens had a strong bargaining posi-tion.49 The Greens were the second strongest party,behind only the CDU, and thus were poised toreverse the nearly three decade old formula of red-green coalitions in which they were always the SPD’sjunior partner. Not at this juncture: With WinfriedKretschmann becoming the very first Green minister-president in any of the German Länder, the Greenshad emerged as top dogs, as bosses at the executivehelm of a very important state.50 Polls conducted byInfratest-Dimap showed that the Greens in this elec-tion had gained a significant number of votes fromevery other party represented in the Landtag.51 TheFDP in particular suffered significantly, losing approx-imately 60,000 voters to the Greens.52 The CDU alsohad a sizable number of voters abandon it in that theGreens received more than 80,000 votes from peoplewho had previously voted for the ChristianDemocratic Union.53 These types of massive elec-toral shifts from established parties to what had beenconsidered a fringe would have been extremelyimplausible prior to various core green issuesbecoming part of Germany’s quotidian political norm.

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Even outside the political world, ecology, as well asits accompanying buzzword “sustainability” is verymuch a brand; appealed to constantly in advertisingfor an astoundingly wide array of products and serv-ices, including food items, building materials, banks,and cars, to name but a few. These claims are socommon, and, unfortunately, so commonly misleading,that several websites have been created for the solepurpose of evaluating these claims about their allegedenvironmental friendliness and sustainability. One ofthe most popular of these websites is the “ClimateLie-Detector,”54 which asks the following question onits homepage: “Suddenly everyone’s trying to savethe climate. Really?”55 Regardless of the effective-ness of the actual product, merely its label and claimof being green, sustainable, and organic in whatevervague manner this might be the case, enjoys an apriori positive valence and invokes virtue. It is oftenunclear what exactly these concepts mean and whattheir actual effect is in practice, but greennessconveys an a priori legitimacy in contemporaryGerman discourse that is priceless and more or lessuncontested.

This is any brand’s epitome of success. The Greens’core value of saving the environment has attained amonopoly of virtue in Germany as a whole, whichtolerates no opposing views on a serious scale. Theepitome of any brand’s success is its nearly total elim-ination of opposing brands and the marginalization ofrival narratives as legitimate alternatives. The Greenshave attained precisely such a state in Germany ontheir core issue of ecology. This is no mean feat insuch short a time. All kudos to them!

Feminism and Women

Women have played an important role in German poli-tics for more than a century. Well beyond the well-known figures of the Left like Rosa Luxemburg andClara Zetkin, women have not been strangers toGerman political life even if they had been—as in allcomparable industrial societies—at its margins, andclearly not by their own choosing. Thus, for example,we would be remiss not to mention here the four“Mothers of the Basic Law”:56 Elisabeth Selbert,Friederike Nadig, Helene Weber (who also worked onthe Weimar constitution), and Helene Wessel.57

These women were responsible for the portion of the

Basic Law that calls unmistakably for “men andwomen [to] have equal rights,” which would clearlygive an important legitimating frame for women’sfuture participation in German politics and publicaffairs.58 Women such as Elizabeth Schwarzhaupt, aCDU Bundestag member who in 1961 became thefirst female cabinet minister in German history; theSPD’s Annemarie Renger, the first female presidentof the German Bundestag, elected to this illustriousposition in 1972; and Angela Merkel, the first femalechancellor of the Federal Republic, are but the mostprominent representatives and beneficiaries of thisinclusive inclination.

But inclinations and gestures remain distant from andmarginal to the norm which manifested itself muchmore emphatically in the low percentage of womenparticipating in politics on all three levels of Germangovernment, none more than on that of the federation.Despite the aforementioned notable achievements,the percentage of women in the Bundestag dippedbelow 10 percent in 1957 and stayed there until1983.59 This underrepresentation of women in publiclife belied the equality guaranteed them by the BasicLaw and was consistently criticized by feminists ingeneral and members of the Green Party in partic-ular.60

As the most emphatic institutional representatives ofthe emancipatory movements of the late 1960s andearly 1970s, and as the most ideal-typical embodi-ment of the New Left under whose aegis the so-calledSecond Women’s Movement was to change publiclife in all advanced industrial societies to a degree thatwas previously unimaginable, it should come as nosurprise at all that the Greens have been Germany’smost emphatic and persistent leaders on the centralissue of women’s equal role in politics and society forthe last three decades. Thus, it is no coincidence thatthe first term in which the Greens served in theBundestag comprised exactly the time period inwhich the percentage of women serving in that bodyreached 10 percent for the first time in decades.61 Asthe Greens established themselves among the votingpublic and within governmental institutions, the rightsof and for women in their most varied and compre-hensive aspects (if not necessarily “feminism” in itsexplicit and radical manifestations), gained an endur-ingly higher salience in German political life than it

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ever had at any stage in German history.

The Greens were the first parliamentary party inGermany to create rules that were expressly designedto ensure the substantive numerical presence ofwomen as the party’s representatives in the country’svarious legislatures (so-called Mandatsträgerinnen)and in leadership positions within the party itself. Theparty explains the reasoning behind this decision in aspecial section of its website: “In the women’s statuteof the Greens it is stipulated that women deserve atleast half of all offices and mandates. In elections toboards of directors or in the preparation of lists forparliamentary elections the odd seats will be occu-pied by women—the first place is therefore reservedfor a woman. This influences our politics and poli-cies: equal opportunities for women and men consti-tute one of our central policy demands, and there ismuch left to be done. We want to create a frameworkto ensure that women have equal opportunities inemployment and also that in everyday life, work in awoman’s career as well as her family can (and will) beequally divided between women and men.”62

Since this egalitarian scheme’s inception, it hasproven very successful in ensuring and furtherincreasing gender parity within the Green Party’sleadership and parliamentary delegation.63 In fact,this scheme’s immense success and overall legiti-macy can once again—just like in matters of ecologydiscussed in the previous section—be gauged by itsbeing copied by the Greens’ rivals in the Bundestag.With the exception of the FDP, which is under tremen-dous pressure from within its own ranks to enactsimilar rules, all parties represented in Germany’sfederal legislative body—and thus the pinnacle of thecountry’s locus of leadership and power—haveadopted reforms and rules that if not mirror theGreens’ gender reforms identically, represent closecopies of them.64 Yet again, imitation is the mostconfirming and flattering form of success. TheGreens’ special commitment to gender equality hasgained salience—indeed prominence—within theGerman political system.

The SPD was the first Bundestag party to follow thelead of the Greens and institute a women’s quota(Frauenquote) for intra-party leadership positions aswell as the party’s parliamentary representation. In

1988, the SPD decided to establish a 40 percentwomen’s quota for both structures.65 While thispolicy has significantly increased the percentages ofwomen within the various SPD parliamentary delega-tions (16.1% in 1987; 27.2% in 1990; 38.4% in2009, the highest the SPD has achieved thus far), theparty has consistently fallen short of its stated goal of40 percent.66 That said, 38.4 percent is not bad,especially when accompanied by the equallyrespectable tally of 37 percent of SPD representa-tives in the sixteen state parliaments being female in2011, thus giving clear testimony to the fact that theparty’s legislators well beyond the top had witnesseda meaningful influx of women. Add to this that 46percent of the so-called Federal Presidium(Bundespräsidum) and a whopping 58 percent of theparty’s executive committee (Parteivorstand) isfemale, and there is ample evidence that women doin fact play a key role in this party’s leadership struc-ture.67 Thus, the myriad red-green coalitions thatbecame commonplace in the landscape of Germanpolitics over the past three decades and in which theGreens almost always served as the SPD’s juniorpartner, left many a mark on the senior partner in abevy of areas, not least in the gender composition ofits central players and crucial representatives.

The Greens and the SPD have also introduced andsupported legislation that would have initiated thesegender quotas well beyond the immediate confines oftheir own organizational purview and made themcommonplace in the German economy and privateindustry. Various versions of such legislation havebeen advanced over time, but the common theme toall involves a legally binding quota regarding theproportion of women in leadership positions at largeGerman companies. While no such legislation hasactually been passed into law at the time of thiswriting, the informal pressure and the increasing soci-etal legitimacy of the demand for gender equality hasled to numerous companies instituting such reformson their own. The largest and most prominent amongthese has been Deutsche Telekom, which decidedthat 30 percent of its middle- and upper-levelmanagement will be women by the end of 2015.68

Another prominent organization in Germany that hasinstituted very similar reforms in this area has beenver.di (Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft), the

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large trade union for service employees that repre-sents over two million German workers. In recentyears the union instituted a 50:50 female-male quotawithin all of its governing committees.69 Despite thefact that the red-green governments of the late 1990sand early 2000s were unable to pass legislation ofgender equality at the federal level, the fact that thistype of legislation is even discussed and remainsunder consideration at the highest levels of govern-ment demonstrates the special salience that women’sissues have attained in Germany over the past threedecades, in good part due to the Greens.

Despite the Old Left’s longstanding claim that aproper pursuit—let alone complete attainment—ofsocialism will automatically and inevitably lead to theliberation of all women from the yoke of bourgeoistyranny and capitalism’s iniquities, we need notbelabor in this forum how “real existing socialism” justlike “real existing social democracy” added little tothe proper liberation of women either within the OldLeft’s institutions themselves or in the arena of theiroperation. Truth be told, by subsuming the liberationof women as a simple epiphenomenon to the libera-tion of the proletariat, the Old Left made few, if any,efforts in fighting the extant sexism of the societies inwhich it operated, often abating such sexism like somany other aspects of bourgeois culture.70

Thus, there can be not much doubt that the currentFrauenquote utilized by Die Linke in the Bundestagowes its existence to the larger legacy and societalinfluence of the Greens and their New Left milieu andculture rather than to traditions hailing from the worldof the Old Left which, after all, continues to embodythe bulk of this party’s identity and history.71 SinceDie Linke first entered the Bundestag in 1990—whenit was still known as the PDS before assuming itscurrent nomenclature after the PDS and an entitycalled WASG merged in the course of the 2000s—the party has never had a female quota in itsBundestag presence lower than 43.3 percent.72

When the party temporarily lost its status as a full-fledged caucus (Fraktion) in parliament between2002 and 2005, it was represented solely by twowomen, Petra Pau and Gesine Lötzsch, both of whomhad attained their seats by dint of winning theirrespective districts in Berlin. Thus, they were bothaccorded a seat in the legislature regardless of how

their party as a whole fared with the electorate,confirming the primacy of the so-called Direktmandatin the framework of German electoral law, constitu-tional interpretation, and traditions of political conven-tion and culture. The method of ensuring therepresentation of women that Die Linke has come touse largely conforms to that of the Greens, which,among others, demands an explanation of any devia-tion from the strict rule of a 50:50 parity in the staffingof positions. Party culture exacts that such discrep-ancies not only be explained and justified but—moreimportant, of course—avoided.73

Despite the notable accomplishments of womenhailing from the Christian Democratic Union, asrecently as in the late 1980s fewer than 8 percent ofthe CDU Bundestag deputies were women.74 Thispersistent problem did not go unnoticed by the CDUmembership and leadership who, in 1996 inHannover, passed an exploratory women’s quorum(Frauenquorum), which was renewed indefinitely in2001.75 The CDU explains this Frauenquorum in apamphlet distributed by the party in the followingmanner: “We must strive to intensify the cooperationwith and promotion of women at all rungs of our party.This is an important task for all levels of the party. Theproportion of women among members of the CDU,approximately 25%, is still too low. Also, among ouroffice holders in the party and among our represen-tatives in the various legislatures, women remain aminority. Our policy is clear: women should constituteat least one third of all party officers and legislators ofthe CDU.”76

During the parliamentary term from 1994-1998, 13.9percent of the CDU deputies were women.77 Thispercentage peaked between 2002 and 2005, when23 percent of the CDU Bundestag Fraktion werewomen, before backsliding slightly to 20.1 percent inthe most recent Bundestag term.78 Although there isa continuing disparity between men and women in theUnion, the CDU’s Frauenquorom seems to be havinga positive effect on women’s placement and promo-tion inside the party and its purview. Also, despite thedifferent name and comparative moderation of theCDU directive, the gesture is unmistakably related tothe policy on gender equality instituted by the Greensa decade earlier. No matter how one twists and turnsit, advocating for the substantive representation of

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women on equal parity with men on all levels of poli-tics and society is an idea with a distinctly Greenlineage.

Even the CSU, the CDU’s more conservativeBavarian sister-party, has had to deal with the type ofwomen-friendly if not explicitly feminist politics origi-nally advocated by the Greens. In 2010, the partydecided to institute a system similar to that used bythe CDU, demanding—mirabile dictu—a higherpercentage of female representation than the CDU.Thus, the CSU directive calls for 40 percent of theoffices of the party’s Kreis and Ortsverbände to beoccupied by women.79 It is difficult to evaluate howthis change will affect the party, as there have beenno elections at the federal level or within Bavaria sincethis directive’s adoption. However, the CSU certainlyhas room for improvement: only six of its forty-fourBundestag representatives are women. It is hard toimagine the CSU introducing a women’s quotawithout the pressure exerted by the actions of theother parties in parliament and without the issueattaining a broadening legitimacy in the German polit-ical discourse as a whole.

Even though the FDP, as one might expect pursuantto its philosophical adherence to classical Europeanliberalism (in stark contrast to the American variant ofthis political label), opposes in principle any forma-tions such as quotas of any kind that favor any collec-tive, regardless how worthy, over the individual, theparty has sotto voce nonetheless also significantlyincreased the number of women within its parliamen-tary delegation. In 1983, the first year that the Greensserved in the Bundestag, three of the FDP’s thirty-fiveparliamentary representatives were women,accounting for a meager 8.6 percent of the total dele-gation.80 By 1990, that percentage had increased to20.3 percent.81 In the present session of theBundestag, 24.7 percent of the FDP parliamentarycaucus is female, a notably higher total than either theCDU’s or CSU’s, their respective statutes and direc-tives for the advancement of women notwithstanding.

In 1994 the FDP recognized the Liberale Frauen,founded in 1990, as the official women’s organizationof the party.82 This is significant because in 2011there emerged substantial disagreement between theLiberale Frauen and the “patriarchy of the FDP higher

ups”83 over the treatment of women within the partyin general and the establishment of some sort ofinner-party women’s quota in particular.84 In January,the chairwoman of the Liberale Frauen characterizedthe party thusly: “The FDP is a men’s club. You facean uncanny headwind if you count yourself amongthe Liberale Frauen.”85 This criticism has beenechoed by other prominent women within the FDP,including the former deputy chairperson of the federalparty, Brigitte Susanne Pöpel. Pöpel, who resignedfrom her post and left the party in 2012, clarified herdeparture to the Süddeutsche Zeitung with thefollowing rather unequivocal words: “A tone hostile towomen and family prevails in the FDP at the local,state, and federal levels.”86

These criticisms leveled against the FDP are similarin tone and content to the charges that the Greensinveighed against the entire German political systemin the early 1980s. One small but tangible remedy forthe Greens of this societal injustice was their intro-duction of a quota system designed to help womenattain advancement by political fiat that the then-normal state of things would not permit them. Wefind it a significant indicator of the distance that theGreens’ remedy has traversed in the Federal Republicof Germany’s politics over the past three decadesthat a group such as the Liberale Frauen would favorsuch a system, in essence embracing a Green ideaand policy as their own.87 The notion that formalequality for women, as guaranteed by the Basic Law,necessitated the introduction of quotas to attain adegree of substantive representation that still remainsfar from embodying a real gender equality but thathas, at least, commenced the long and arduousjourney in the right direction, owes its existence to theGreens who were the very first to have introduced itboth conceptually and concretely to German poli-tics—and beyond.

Peace and Pacifism

Similar to the extolling of nature and the key conceptsof ecology, so, too, has peace evolved as a distinctpolitical ideology and a significant icon for popularmobilization, particularly in leftist and progressivecircles, in the Federal Republic after World War II.From protests against the re-arming of theBundeswehr and West Germany’s joining NATO, to

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the opposition of the stationing of atomic weapons onGerman soil in the 1950s and1960s; from themassive opposition to the Vietnam War, to thediscontinuation of the compulsory military draft(Wehrpflicht) in 2011; the pursuit of peace and thespurning of all acts of state-led violence, particularlyinvolving Germans, has become one of the FederalRepublic’s most distinct political markers, a veritablecredo beyond any questioning and doubt. Perhaps indirect response to Germany’s bellicosity in the firsthalf of the twentieth century, Germans haveembraced peace as a non-negotiable virtue, deemingthemselves among its most valiant practitioners onearth. Even though explicit pacifism in its strictestmeaning, i.e., the categorical rejection of any forceunder any and all circumstances, has, possibly, dimin-ished in ideological importance due to internationalevents throughout the 1990s, there remains a deep-seated skepticism of the use of military force thatpervades virtually all of German society and enjoyswide-spread legitimacy among all political partiesrepresented in the Bundestag.88

But in this area, too, the Greens have assumed prideof place. Since its founding, the Green Party has beena consistent advocate for peace, although theabsolute nature of this consistency was somewhatcompromised by the massacres in the formerYugoslavia during the 1990s. The mass slaughter ofcivilians caused “many members of the Green andSocial Democratic parties to question the degree towhich one half of their old mantra, ‘Never Again War,’was compatible with the other, ‘Never AgainAuschwitz.’”89

This dilemma raises another related and equally sensi-tive issue that has assumed center stage for theGreens from their very beginning as a movement andsubsequently as a party: the absolute value anduniversal applicability of human rights. While the issueof pacifism per se and at all costs has somewhatwaned for the Green Party, especially since its firstentrance into governmental responsibilities on thefederal level in 1999, peace and its maintenance aswell as attainment, and the basic opposition to anystate-led force, continue to be central tenets of theGreen Party. Any use of force needs to be anabsolutely last resort and can only be implemented ina strictly confined manner solely for the purpose of

preventing a genocide or a humanitarian disaster ofsimilar magnitude.90

The centrality of peace attained a particular saliencefor the German Greens when compared to theireponymous colleagues across Europe. Until themiddle of the 1990s, the positions relating to any actsof military intervention (Kampfeinsätze) advocated bythe Greens (and, to be fair, much of the SPD as well,in other words both the green and the red GermanLeft) were “out of line with their ideological counter-parts in other European countries such as France andBritain.”91 This attitude experienced a reluctant—andonly temporary—modification caused by themassacre of over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men andboys at the hands of the Serbian army in Srebrenica,making this genocidal act the absolute worst inEurope’s history since the end of World War II. Forinstance, despite the Greens’ explicit commitment topacifism within their party platform, half of their parlia-mentary delegation in the Bundestag voted in favor ofGerman participation in the Implementation Force inBosnia.92 Indeed, even the party’s left-wing was flum-moxed as to how the Bosnian conflict could beresolved peacefully: “In private discussion docu-ments, the party admitted having no answers as tohow to stop the Serbs or protect the civilian popula-tion.”93 It was in the process of this intra-Greenshowdown that Joschka Fischer, one of the party’skey leaders from the early 1980s until 2005, formu-lated what we continue to deem one of the mostimportant public documents of postwar German poli-tics. In a twelve page open letter, Fischer argued thatunder certain rare, perhaps even singular, historicconfigurations, which obviously, so he believed,pertained to the genocidal situation in Bosnia as thepremeditated and well-planned slaughter inSrebrenica had clearly demonstrated, the sacrosanctbelief in peace had to be temporarily suspended forthe greater good of saving thousands of innocentlives, if necessary even by military intervention. If thehorrors of German history taught young Germans tospurn war and extol peace at all costs, then it alsosurely taught them to abhor the genocidal murder ofinnocent civilians at the hands of power-hungry andunaccountable dictators.94 With his letter, Fischerhad opened a huge debate engulfing much ofGerman intellectual and political life way beyond theconfines of the Greens as party and milieu.

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And sure enough, his statement did not remainunchallenged within the Green community. Thequartet of equally prominent Green leaderscomprising Kerstin Müller, Claudia Roth, LudgerVolmer, and Jürgen Trittin responded to Fischer witha similarly lengthy letter outlining why they believedthat continued categorical opposition to the use offorce remained not only the strategically wisest but,more important still, the sole morally acceptableresponse for the Greens, and by extension forGermans and Germany. Their letter carried the tellingtitle, “Where will the demand for obligatory militaryintervention against genocide lead?”95 This letterfocused primarily on the slippery slope of creating aninevitable obligation to intervene in any conflict thatthe United Nations labels a genocide, arguing thatthese types of conflicts are often difficult to differen-tiate from civil wars and other regional conflicts.96

The letter expressed profound skepticism concerningthe wisdom of sending German troops all over theworld and invoked never to allow such a situation toprovide a precedent which could then lead to an obli-gation to engage in such military acts possibly on aregular basis.

NATO’s war against the Serbs over the Kosovoconflict in the spring of 1999 would further test andstrain the Greens’ pacifist commitments. After all, theywere now part of a governing coalition with JoschkaFischer being Germany’s foreign minister as well asvice chancellor. Suddenly, the issues of pacifismversus humanism; peace versus military interventionassumed a dimension of immediacy and urgencyabout which the Greens had most likely not evendreamed when they entered the Bundestag in 1983.But their political success propelled them right intothe heart of German and European power. Gonewere the days of the comforts of a hippie-ized milieuin which talk was cheap and actions barely mattered.It was show time! And sure enough, the red-greengovernment, under the leadership of a SocialDemocrat and a Green, made the unprecedenteddecision in April 1999 to enter into combat as aNATO ally bombarding a country (Yugoslavia) and acity (Belgrade) that the Nazi Luftwaffe had attackedin April 1941. The missions flown by German fighterjets during this conflict represented the very first timethat German troops were actively engaged in actualmilitary combat since the end of World War II.97

It would be way beyond the confines of this work toanalyze in further detail the intra-Green debates aboutthe moral need to participate in the war against Serbiain the spring of 1999 on the one hand; and the equallysalient moral need not to do so under any circum-stances. Suffice it to say that seldom have we seenintra-party debates in any postwar European settingconducted with such deep conviction, oratorical bril-liance, and unbridled passion—alas, also acrimony,even assault—as was the case that spring with theGerman Greens. Many Germans and Europeansmouth the now-platitudinous mantras of “never againwar” and “never again Auschwitz.” However, it wasclear to any careful observer at that time that theGreens deeply empathized with and stood for both ofthese credos, and that the (at least temporal) incom-patibility between these two identity-forming beliefscaused a lot of genuine soul searching and pain formany in the party and the movement.

Despite the numerous instances where a Germanfederal government has sent German troops abroad,it has never been an easy decision, always fraughtwith immense controversy, and meeting with massiveopposition bespeaking once again the absolutecentrality of peace to German public life way beyondthe Greens. As recently as 2012, with the NATOintervention in the Libyan conflict all but a done deal,the CDU/CSU-FDP-led federal governmentdisplayed its commitment to peace at virtually anycost by exhausting all non-combative options, whichincluded an abstention by Germany from the SecurityCouncil resolution to authorize military action inLibya.98 Thus, even—or perhaps especially—aconservative-led German government risked angeringits allies in NATO and the European Union such as theUnited States, Great Britain, and particularly Francein this case by refusing to publicly endorse, let aloneactually join, the military campaign knowing full wellthat such a move enjoys a massive approval by theGerman public.

Guido Westerwelle, Germany’s foreign minister atthe time of this writing, described the bedrock of hisgovernment’s foreign policy spiffily: “German foreignpolicy is peace policy.”99 All fine, except this is notnew and bespeaks a great continuity in Germanforeign policy bridging a number of governmentsbearing different political colors and ideologies.

Indeed, these very words borrow the first sentence ofthe foreign policy chapter of the coalition agreementbetween the SPD and the Greens, secured in theaftermath of the 1998 election.100 We are notaccusing the German foreign minister of plagiarism.Instead, we mean to highlight how multi-partisan andpan-partisan the sentiments of peace have been inGerman politics in which the Greens, it turns out, areno longer the outliers that they still love to be, but havecome to represent the norm and the boring middle. Inthe same interview in which Westerwelle uttered theabove quotation, he also explained that, “Germanforeign and security policy follow a line in which mili-tary operations are only a last resort.”101

Despite their continued and probably permanentreluctance to tolerate, let alone accommodate, armedinterventions for humanitarian purposes, the Greensremain unconditionally opposed to any armedconflicts that they deem wars of opportunity andchoice. Thus, the Greens were quick to reject anyGerman involvement in the most recent U.S. war inIraq,102 continue to oppose Germany’s participationin NATO’s U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, and opposedthe NATO-led campaign in Libya.

The most significant event in recent years relating tothe larger peace-pacifism complex pertains toGermany’s abolishing the compulsory military draftfor young men. Despite the fact that an ever-decreasing number of young Germans opted to fulfillthis obligation by actually serving in the military,choosing instead to perform tasks in the so-calledcivilian service (Zivildienst), the de jure suspension ofthe draft symbolizes emphatically what a decidedlycore value and immense legitimacy all things involvingpeace have come to embody in contemporaryGerman society. The Greens’ impetus for thismomentous development cannot be overstated. Forthem, the passage of this law represented the culmi-nation of a thirty-year committed campaign on behalfof non-violence and peace which—in its contours—became a cherished public good in German societyas a whole. Here is the Greens’ welcoming declara-tion as found on the website of the party’s Bundestagdelegation: “On Thursday, the Bundestag, with thepassage of the Military Law Amendment Act of 2011,voted for the suspension of compulsory militaryservice as of 7/1/2011. The suspension of compul-

sory military service in Germany is a historic, longoverdue step, which we strongly welcome.”103

Polling data suggest that peace is a more prominentand important value in Germany than in Europe as awhole. In a Eurobarometer poll from November 2008,45 percent of respondents from across the EuropeanUnion member states named ”peace” as the valuethat was most important to them.104 In November of2009 the same question was asked in Germany andin this case 61 percent of those polled said thatpeace was their most important value.105 Despite thecontinued deployment of the German military abroad,most notably in Afghanistan, the scope of these oper-ations has been quite limited and massivelyproscribed by the government to a point where theactual combat in which these troops engage is quiteminimal and most certainly much less than thatpursued by British, French, and other NATO troops,let alone the United States armed forces. Put simply,military actions of any kind remain deeply unpopularin contemporary German society with no signs of anychange in the near or even distant future.

While a strict adherence to an orthodox pacifistdoctrine is no longer part of the Greens’ ideology orpolitical make up, it was largely abandoned only whenit came into direct conflict with the Greens’ concomi-tant obligation to the upholding of human rights. TheGreens continue to maintain that preemptive wars,wars of choice, or any wars designed to advancenational interests remain ineffective as a politicalstrategy and contemptible as a human act. In a sense,though, the Greens’ radical pacifism has become amoot point because by dint of the German public’smassive disdain for any bellicosity in general, let aloneany involving Germany in particular, this pacifism hasbecome subsumed by the society and culture at large.In a sense, just like there is nothing particularly Greenanymore about loving nature and fighting to preserveit, so, too, there seems little Green in today’s Germanyabout extolling peace at virtually any and all costs.Peace and pacifism are not contentious issues incontemporary Germany’s lively democracy. A vastconsensus celebrates them as one of post-NaziGermany’s great contributions to European civilizationand culture and offering Germans a moral perch fromwhich they can berate others—Americans and Israelisin particular, in particular with Syrians, Russians,

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Sudanese, and other peoples committing horribleatrocities accorded much greater leniency and muchmore muted outrage by the German public andmedia—for being beholden to baser values. One neednot be a particularly well-versed analyst to realizehow—given Germany’s recent history—it must feelparticularly rewarding to Germans to be able tolecture Americans and Israelis (meaning Jews, ofcourse) about their moral turpitude from a self-proclaimed moral perch.

Basisdemokratie: The Stringency ofDemocracy from Below

In its early years, the Green Party portrayed itself asthe parliamentary representative and the political armof the new social movements and, by extension, theworld of the New Left. More important still, perhaps,was the fact that regardless of the Greens’ self-depic-tion and understanding, German society at largeviewed the Greens as such. Part and parcel of thisentire milieu that appeared so forcefully on the polit-ical stage of virtually all advanced industrial societiesin the late 1960s was that “new” politics entailed notonly the introduction of a radically different content,but that such would have remained vacuous andmeaningless without a concomitant, and equallyradical, change in form. At the very core of both,altered form and content, lay the medium of partici-patory democracy, which demanded that all politicsbe the creation of an egalitarian collective in which thewhole’s will could never be usurped by an arrogantelite. Any kind of leadership had to be fully embeddedin the collective’s active participation, not merely itsnominal approval. Politics was to be the very creationof a committed collective and never the product ofelites. These convictions as well as practices ofradical democracy owed more to the various strainsof anarchism than to those of socialism.

The Greens prided themselves on embodying thiskind of participatory democracy in their very core,basking in a participatory culture that extolled grassroots democracy, or what they came to callBasisdemokratie, as a virtue every bit as worthy asecology, women’s rights, and peace. Indeed, this termbecame a veritable “magic word”106 of early Greenideology and identity.107

To the best of its abilities, the Green Party sought toavoid establishing any kind of hierarchy within itsranks lest such undermine the party’s democraticexistence and mission. For that purpose, the partyinstituted a number of steps each of which had theexplicit purpose to enhance Basisdemokratie andimpede the formation of and governance byentrenched elites. Thus, for example, top party officeswere originally totally honorific with no remunerationwhatsoever. “Thus while everybody was encouragedto live for politics, nobody should live off it.”108

Whereas this policy was rooted in a genuine, deepmistrust of the inherent elitism and undemocraticnature of professional politics, it obviously carriedconsequences which, too, were potentially elitist andundemocratic in their own way. By making the topoffices in the Green Party unpaid positions,109 theparty essentially ensured that these offices could notbe filled by those party members that needed to workfor a living, thereby creating a different impediment toa truly democratic order.110 Party meetings at thistime were lengthy affairs since everyone that wishedto speak was allowed to do so with virtually no limitplaced on the length of her or his contribution.Democracy in its pure—i.e., non-delegated—formproved not only cumbersome and complicated, butalso immensely time consuming. Clearly, some ofthese practices had to be compromised by the insti-tutional limits and exigencies that the Greens came toexperience with their increasing entry into the arenaof German politics. None were more curtailing ofthese initially radical ways than parliaments, both onthe state and federal level, with their strict rules, regu-lations, statutes, and unspoken mores.

Part of the larger complex of any grass-roots democ-racy, and most certainly the Greens’ radicalBasisdemokratie, entails an a priori negative view ofpower, regarding it with fear, suspicion, and disdainby dint of its being an inherent threat to popularparticipation and the people’s will. Radical democratsdislike power of any kind, and most certainly asconventionally construed in politics, by virtue of itsinherent elitism, exclusiveness, secrecy, and, ofcourse, its drug-like addictiveness in that any powercreates a craving for more. Thus, the Greensremained immensely uneasy with their early electoralsuccesses as a party. They feared—perhapspresciently—that these very successes will bring

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them closer to real power which in turn was going tohave an inevitably corrosive and corruptive influenceon their very being and mission as a party and move-ment that were to offer a real alternative to the statusquo and the establishment.

Petra Kelly voiced this fear of power following theGreens’ early electoral successes with the followingtelling words: “I am sometimes afraid that the Greenswill suddenly get 13 percent in an election and turninto a power-hungry party (Machterwerbspartei). Itwould be better for us to stay at 6 or 7 percent andremain uncompromising in our basic demands. Betterto do that than have Green ministers.”111

One would be hard put to find an equivalent state-ment from a leading politician belonging to any otherparty in the Federal Republic—or any other liberaldemocracy for that matter. Typically, party elitesrejoice when voters reward their organization withunexpectedly high tallies at elections. Indeed, mostwould express hope to grow even further at subse-quent polls rather than voice fear and skepticismabout the potential ills associated with the alreadyattained tally. But then again, the Greens in the earlyto middle 1980s were not a normal party. Emanatingfrom a milieu that extolled smallness with virtue andderided size with evil—just remember the slogan“small is beautiful” coined in a Zeitgeist and by anenvironment of which the Greens were prototypicalrepresentatives—becoming a large and normal partydid in fact appear threatening to the very core thatdefined being Green at the time.

For reasons beyond the purview of this work, theGreens decided to forge ahead along the parliamen-tary path, despite the concerns of Kelly, Jutta Dittfurth,and other prominent members of the party at thattime.112 But completing the transformation from anoriginal “anti-party party”—a protest and niche party—into a party that was to become fully apt to join acoalition with the big boys and run a government(becoming what the Germans call koalitionsfähig)required a good deal more than a simple ideologicalbattle within the party between those that wanted topursue politics via the parliamentary and thus party-dominated route and their adversaries who fearedthat such a path would sell the Greens’ very soul,thus preferring to view the party’s primary role as

being anchored in a movement whose core existedoutside of established institutions such as legisla-tures and governments. In addition to necessitating aclear and decisive conceptual and programmaticvictory for the commitment of pursuing politics in amore or less conventional parliamentary manner, theinternal rules and structures of the Green Party alsorequired a significant overhaul from the party’s earlydays before the Greens could truly enter the politicalestablishment at the national level.

In the early days of the party, a fundamental opposi-tion to participation in government was prevalentamong the membership and leadership of the GreenParty. Such ideological maximalism regarded anycompromise with “the system” as undesirable, regard-less of immediate benefits such compromise mighthave brought to the party. As the ideology and internalpractices of the Greens evolved from such maximalisttendencies toward a much more pragmatic view ofpolitics, many of these reforms were fought whole-heartedly by ideological purists: “This sort of argu-mentation was mustered by fundamentalists to rejectcategorically almost every proposal or attempt todeploy or increase the Greens’ political influence bethey participation in a governing coalition, profes-sionalization of the party, expansion of the electoralbasis or countless other issues.”113

With the exception of the still-extant women’s quota,already discussed two sections previously in thiswork, most of the intra-party practices from the“halcyon” days of the West German Greens designedto enhance democracy within the party and diminishelitism and power holding at the top either no longerexist or have been massively diluted. Among suchcore measures were: the separation of party positionand legislative representation (Trennung von Amt undMandat); the existence of a compelling congruencebetween party decision and legislative behavior andvoting by the party’s representatives in all deliberativebodies of legislation (imperatives Mandat); and therotation principle, a strict term limitation, in which aGreen legislator could not retain her or his office forlonger than two years, having to make way for anotherperson waiting in the wings (Rotationsprinzip).114

The separation of party position from representationin a legislature, or the “separation of office and

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mandate” to use the nomenclature of German politics,is one of the first principles that the Green Partyemployed to avoid the undemocratic structure buttotally common habit of accumulating offices thathave defined all European parliamentary systems. Justthink of how virtually every French cabinet member isnot only a bigwig in her or his political party in termsof occupying a crucial position in it, but is also likelyto hold various other regional offices such as mayorof her or his town. Indeed, it would not be erroneousto argue that the linkage between the two representsthe very foundation of conventional politics in liberaldemocracies since, after all, the leader of the execu-tive is furnished by the leader of the party with thelargest number of legislative seats. And she or heassumes both of these crucial positions by dint ofbeing the leader of a party. Or put differently, theexecutive’s very being hinges on its representation inthe legislative institutions of the country’s polity. So,in effect, there exists a triple accumulation of officesthat define the crux of parliamentary democracy.

The Greens attempted to counter this convention byforbidding any of their party’s members to hold morethan one office at a time. Specifically, their new prin-ciple required that members of the Greens’ parlia-mentary delegations not hold an office within theinternal structure of the party, e.g., as members of itsexecutive council (Bundesvorstand) or any such deci-sion-making bodies.115 This measure would ideallygive the party’s grassroots greater access to theirelected representatives; disperse power within theparty between its leaders outside legislatures andwithin them; prevent accumulation of offices, thusentrenched elites; and inhibit the creation of a casteof party apparatchiks so derisively labeled “profes-sional politicians” (Berufspolitiker) by the Greens atthe time. Thus, for example, in 1998 there was muchcontroversy over whether or not the newly mintedGreen ministers in the federal government couldcontinue to hold their seats in the Bundestag, as wasnaturally the case for their colleagues from the SPDwho comprised the senior membership of this red-green governing coalition.116

The intra-party debate about this issue remained sorelentless that in 2003 it was submitted to a generalvote of all members of the Greens, a so-calledUrabstimmung, which was only the second such

measure in the history of the Green Party.117 After thevote, in which nearly 25,000 Green Party membersparticipated, the hitherto strict separation of partyoffice from legislative representation wasreplaced.118 The new rule stated that two of the sixmembers of the party’s executive council could main-tain their seat in the Bundestag while continuing toserve in the party leadership.119 In addition tosuccumbing to the grueling demands of governingunder the structural exigencies of a modern liberaldemocracy which ultimately necessitated that theGreens compromise their original measure emanatingfrom their belief in the virtue of a radical (as opposedto a liberal) democracy, the Greens instituted thisreform for more immediate and less lofty reasons aswell: namely their correct realization that leadershiptalent is not only a scarce and valued good in anypolitical context, but that it is incumbent to a partyparticipating in the contact sport called politics toutilize its talent as profusely and proficiently aspossible. The Greens came to realize that leadershiptalent—though perhaps unfair, and most certainlyundemocratic, especially pursuant to Green stan-dards—constituted major currency that a party had touse wisely and not squander.

The so-called “imperatives Mandat” was designed tohold the Green members of parliament accountableto the party membership as a whole. This rule, solidlyemanating from the conviction that collective leader-ship and action was always morally preferable andmore democratic than its individual (liberal and bour-geois) counterpart, basically annulled the decision-making sovereignty that any member of a legislaturepossesses in terms of deciding for whom or what orhow or when to vote; and replaced it with a rule thatdemanded that Green members of legislatures arenot to proceed according to this conventional adagebut vote solely and always in accordance with theparty’s decision. “The deputies were thus, metaphor-ically speaking, regarded as intellectually indenturedmembers of the Green Party base in parliament.”120

This attempt at enhancing the Green membership’sand electorate’s power and influence at the directexpense of its parliamentary representatives—a cleardevice confirming the party’s extolling of grassrootswishes and people’s preferences and its deep suspi-cion of entrenched leadership power and elite deci-

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sions—proved sufficiently controversial to exact anextensive debate about its constitutionality since,according to the Federal Republic’s Basic Law“members of the German Bundestag commit only totheir conscience and are not subject to outsideinstruction.”121 In other words, an explicitlydemanded and party-imposed voting discipline onlegislators robbing them of their freedom to vote asthey please and as their conscience commands themhas been nothing short of unconstitutional in theFederal Republic of Germany—as it is indeed in manyother liberal democracies. In actuality and thequotidian conduct of parliamentary affairs, this issueattained in practice nowhere near the importance thatit had in intellectual debates. And let us not forget thatin Germany, as well as other parliamentary democra-cies, there exists a good amount of party discipline inwhich legislators faithfully vote the party line strictlyimposed on them by their parties’ whips and theirideologies. To be sure, there exist instances in whichthe conscience of a legislator clashes with themandate of her or his party, leading to a discrepancyin voting preferences. But such deviation remainsrelatively rare and confined to certain special issuesin all parties operating in parliamentary democracies,in notable contrast to presidential ones where suchparty discipline is not a sine qua non for governanceby dint of the strict separation of legislative from exec-utive powers. Thus, practically speaking, where theunconstitutional imperative mandate begins and theconstitutional party discipline ends will remain foreverblurry.

Despite the constitutional controversy concerning the“imperative mandate,” the Green Party’s so-called“rotation principle” proved much more problematic inits practical implementation. Designed to insulate theGreen Party from the perils of professional politics,the rotation principle mandated that Green represen-tatives had to leave their posts after two years122 inoffice, only to be replaced by a substitute(Nachrücker).123 The party expected each of theterm-limited representatives to work extensively withher or his replacement throughout their two-yearincumbency to make the transition between the twoas smooth as possible.124 In addition to minimizingthe disruptions that occur inevitably in any transitionbetween incumbents of any office, this requiredmeasure of cooperation testified to the Greens’

commitment to involve as many people within thepolitical process as possible.

And yet again, one could witness in this instance, asin many others of the Greens’ measures, a clashbetween democratic impulses and participatory incli-nations on the one hand, and the exigencies of effi-ciency demanded by complex institutional frameworkson the other. While the rotation principle undoubtedlyreflected the premium that the Green Party placed onBasisdemokratie, it greatly hindered the ability ofGreen parliamentarians to maximize their efficiency aslegislators in the Bundestag. The stringent term limitsof the Green Party impeded the formation of profes-sional relationships within the Bundestag with otherparties’ delegates, thus often leaving the Greens’representatives isolated and without the trust of theirfellow Bundestag deputies.125 Simply put, it takes agreat deal of time to learn the ins and outs in allcomplex organizations, of which the Bundestag mostcertainly is one. Most time consuming of all, of course,is the mastery of the informal codes, the unwrittenrules, the quotidian nuances—in short, the organiza-tional culture—that all complex institutions possessand which are the real fuel that makes them run. Butthe learning of this invisible medium of meta commu-nication not only takes time, but it inevitably producesthose in the know and those left askance, insiders andoutsiders, in other words a world that the Greenswith their inherently democratic impulses distrust anddislike.

The Greens’ party convention in 1991 in Neumünsterset the tone for their subsequent development as(almost) regular members of the German politicalestablishment.126 Occurring just months after theGreens failed to enter the Bundestag in the first elec-tion in then recently unified Germany, this electoraldefeat became a catalyst for pragmatic change for theGreens, just like it would have in the case of any otherpolitical party eager to succeed in the electoral arena.The Neumünster convention would lead the Greensto undertake numerous measures to streamline theirinternal practices. These reforms are summarizedthusly on the website of the Green Party itself: “TheParty’s spokespeople were limited from three to two[…] In addition, the political and organizationalmanagement was distributed over two shoulders, therotation was abolished and the Länderrat [state

council] was set as a ‘little party-day.’”127

Despite the narrowing of the top party office—theparty’s “spokespeople,” please note the consciouslychosen nomenclature avoiding the usual “chair-person” or “president” or “chancellor” or any suchappellations denoting a position of clear leadership—from three to two, the Greens have remained the onlyparty in the Bundestag not to have invested theparty’s parliamentary leadership in one single indi-vidual.128 Even more important, perhaps, in demon-strating the Greens’ still-continued commitment toserious societal reforms that may no longer enjoy thesobriquet of “radical” but remain significant all thesame, is the fact that at least one of these spokes-people has to be a woman, with having had both ofthese leaders be female on occasion.

All the moderations that we discussed brought theGreens closer to the norms of Germany’s establishedparty topography, while—we would submit—stillmaintaining the Green commitment to an enhanceddemocratization of traditional party structures. Indeed,the gathering in Neumünster witnessed the GreenParty’s redefining itself as an “ecological reformparty,” removing the “anti-party party” moniker from itsprogram.129 As such, these changes made theGreens a more likely coalition partner and a moreconventional player in German politics, even if theyalso caused the departure of numerous notablemembers from their ranks whose contribution to thisparty’s formative decade of struggle and its lastinglegacy of success may remain controversial butseems undeniable in our eyes.130 Interestingly, andperhaps tellingly, this fourth pillar of Green identityremained by far the least imitated by any of theGreens’ party rivals in German politics. Unlike thetopical realms of ecology, women, and peace thatconstituted crucially new areas of substance thatcame to define the content of German politics andpublic debate, the area of intra-party democracy—though of great importance to the Greens’ self-under-standing and identity—embodied a less urgent andmore form-related concern whose wider applicabilityto German political life seemed less compelling.

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04changes in greenappearance

In addition to all its programmatic changes andconceptual alterations, which we discussed in theprevious section of our work, the Green Party as awhole as well as its main protagonists have experi-enced significant stylistic shifts that are worthmentioning since they bespeak a kind of visual andappearance-related accommodation without in anyway undermining the Greens’ commitment to theircauses. We are actually convinced that wearing athree-piece suit with a stylish tie in no way bespeakssome kind of automatic sell out to the establishmentand a loss of enthusiasm for progressive politics. TheGreen Party’s Bundestag representatives thatassumed their seats in that illustrious chamber in earlyspring 1983 stood apart from the established partiesboth in terms of their avowed political beliefs as wellas their physical appearances. The party loved toembody a wholesale provocation of existing bour-geois mores and established institutions that rangedfrom its members’ policy preferences to their hair-styles and haberdashery. Outward appearanceembodied a powerful visual symbol that demon-strated a clear yearning for change and an extolling ofa wholesale rejection of established bourgeois cultureand mores, as well as the institutions that representedthem.

When the Greens first entered the Bundestag in1983, their representatives stood in stark contrastwith those of all the other extant parties.131 Themembers of the Green delegation had debated forhours as to whether they should all carry flowerarrangements when entering the chamber or whethereach member should be free to choose her or his owngreen accessories. Der Spiegel’s issue of 4 April1983 describes the Green entrance into theBundestag thusly: “As the delegation appeared onTuesday, everyone stood behind something else; one

person behind his dead pine tree, Klaus Heckerbehind a bright green tie with a button protesting thecensus. Gabriele Gottwald, at 27 the youngest repre-sentative in the Bundestag, demonstrated on herbosom ‘For the free people of Nicaragua.’ The Greenparliamentary delegation’s spokesperson Otto Schilystood behind nothing: ‘I’m bringing myself.’”132

The article further describes the importance of indi-vidual freedom and democratic debate thatsurrounded this novel collective’s grand debutantappearance at the very heart of German power.133

The Greens had entered the big leagues and theyvery much wanted to do so on their own terms. Theevent as a whole was emblematic of the values andpractices of dissent, protest, and alternative views ofpolitics and life that the Greens tried to portray toGerman society but which had, of course, come todefine their own lives throughout the 1970s and early1980s.

The sartorial tendencies of the “regular,” i.e., non-Green, Bundestag representatives in the early 1980scould best be described as “business formal,” apattern that has continued more or less to this day:roughly speaking some sort of jacket with dressslacks or a suit with a shirt and necktie for men; andnon-descript, conservative dresses or suits featuringskirts or slacks for women, with Chancellor Merkelclearly being partial to the latter version, joining HillaryClinton as arguably the most loyal wearers of the pantsuit. Only in the wake of the Greens’ sartorial chal-lenges that commenced in the early 1980s and theirpush for a greater informality have appearances thatwe in the United States call “business casual”(meaning jacket but no tie, or even a cardigan orsweater in lieu of a jacket for men) emerged in thehallowed halls of the Bundestag.134

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changes in green appearance: anadapTed habiTus?

The Green representatives in 1983 were easily distin-guishable from their colleagues on looks alone. DieterDrabiniok and Gert Jannsen, for instance, possessedmore facial hair between the two of them on 29 March1983, than perhaps the entire delegations of all thefour parties represented in the chamber, but also—tellingly—the entire parliamentary delegation of theGreens in 2009.135 Photographs from the 1980sreveal that many members of the Green Party’s parlia-mentary representation wore hand knitted sweatersand indulged in something one might call the“peasant look” which, of course, reflected a valuebespeaking the rejection of modern industrial andurban society rather than the wearer’s social reality oractual origins since none of these representativeswere ever close to being peasants in any meaningfulmanner of that term—even if they would have loved tohave been so. (It would be well beyond the scope ofthis work to discuss the extolling of peasant-liketropes by what has remained arguably Germany’smost urban-based party. Needless to say, it allconverges in the Greens’ reconceptualization ofnature’s role in an advanced industrial society.) Andwe would be remiss not to mention the constancy offresh-cut flowers on the desks of the Green Party’srepresentatives in the Bundestag’s chamber.

Let us use Joschka Fischer’s sartorial transformationover the two decades of his immensely impressivepublic career as one of the Greens’ leading figures inGerman, but also European and indeed global, poli-tics to illustrate our point about changed appear-ances. Fischer caused a minor stir with his clothingwhen he entered the state of Hessen’s parliament inWiesbaden as that state’s first Green Minister of theEnvironment (Umweltminister), which made Fischerthe very first Green Party member to have beenaccorded such a high-ranking executive positionanywhere in Germany and for the first time in Germanhistory. Wearing white Nike tennis shoes, jeans, anda light grey textured sport coat, without any sort ofneckwear, Fischer looked somewhat out of place,especially in sharp contrast to the uniformity of darksuits, ties, and black shoes found on the other (almostexclusively) male legislators, none more conventionalin appearance than Holger Börner, the SocialDemocratic minister-president of the state of Hesseand Fischer’s immediate superior in the cabinet.136

Fischer’s sartorial rebellion earned him the nickname

“Minister of Sneakers.”137 However, by the timeFischer began serving as Germany’s foreign ministerin 1998, his fashion sensibility had changed signifi-cantly. By this time he had come to wear his hair muchshorter and more stylish, while he had forsaken thejeans-with-sport-coat look for a more traditional butspiffily tailored dark suit accessorized with a stylishneck tie.138 Fischer also developed a taste for expen-sive watches, having been photographed sportingsuch fancy brands as Rolex and Glashütte,139

famous luxury watchmakers from Switzerland andGermany, respectively.140 Queried about suchexpensive tastes, Fischer explained that prior topurchasing such watches, he “saved for a longtime.”141

In concluding this brief section on the Greens’ sarto-rial transformation, we would like to quote from anarticle published in Der Spiegel in the aftermath of thePope’s visit to Germany in 2011, during which hepraised the Green Party and the environmental move-ment: “This papal endorsement finally elevatesGermany’s Greens to the status of a party that isincapable of horrifying or provoking anyone. It hasserved its time as a party of protest.”142 We demurwhether this is so in all phases of German public life.But there can be little doubt that in terms of theappearance of Green Party politicians and leadingfigures, the days of shock and awe so front and centerin 1983 have long disappeared.

The campaign posters used by the Greens have alsoundergone significant and telling changes over thepast thirty years. In 1983, the posters featuredcartoonish flowers—the beautiful and iconicsunflower being perhaps the most prominent amongthem—an allusion to a coming “political spring,” aswell as a stylized imperial eagle, a la the iron eagle thathangs within the main chamber of the Bundestag andconstitutes the Federal Republic’s official emblem.143

Eagles, after all, are fierce predators, ruling the skiesas their unchallenged domain. They often constitutesymbols of state authority in many parts of the world,not least, of course, the United States with itsmajestic bald eagle. As such, they are meant to invokerespect, pride, power, independence, and sover-eignty. But the Greens’ erstwhile eagle of the early1980s invoked none of these lofty and majesticideals. Instead, this was a most friendly, almost

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cuddly, decidedly cute, perhaps even smiling anddancing eagle, cartoonish in nature and devoid ofinstilling any fear or projecting power of any kind.144

In a complete flaunting of conventions, none of theGreens’ posters featured any human images.Nowhere to be found were pictures or portraits ofGreen candidates, which had been a staple of everyother party’s electoral campaign in Germany andelsewhere in Europe. The decision not to use the like-nesses of Green candidates on campaign posterswas related to the party’s distaste for professionalpolitics and the distance such hagiographic postersextolling individuals creates between the leaders andthe led, between elites and mass, dichotomies thatwere anathema to the Greens at the time.145 Indeed,posters featuring the likeness of Green politicians ofany kind remained taboo until the mid-1990s.146 Butthen things began to change quite rapidly.

In 1994, for instance, Joschka Fischer was featuredprominently on campaign posters for the Bundestag,wearing a white shirt and striped tie, casually holdinga sport jacket slung over his shoulder.147 The postersused in 1998 and 2002 mirror the transformationobserved in 1994, with Fischer featured yet again in2002, along with Claudia Roth and RenateKünast.148 Posters of this type brought the Greens inline with the established parties’ conventionalcampaign tactics.

Similar to the campaign posters employed by theGreen Party, the logo used by the party’s parliamen-tary delegation has undergone a noticeable evolu-tion. Both the logos and posters of the 1980s appearmuch more cartoonish and colorful than those thatcame to succeed them in the 1990s and the ensuingyears. The parliamentary delegation’s current logomaintains the iconic sunflower, so thoroughly associ-ated with the Greens, and such a pervasive symbol oftheir brand; but the colorful rainbows and butterfliesof logos past are gone, replaced by a trim, greenrectangular background that contrasts the bold whitetext that reads: “Bündnis 90/Die Grünen:Bundestagsfraktion.”149

As the habitus of the Greens has shifted from aprovocative stance of protestation toward one morefriendly to and tolerant of established norms, the party

left a vacuum in its former space. Since the stateparliament elections in Berlin in 2011, the Pirate Partyhas risen to fill precisely this voided space abandonedby the former “anti-party party.” Are we witnessing thearrival of the new Greens? Might the Bundestag elec-tion of 2013 experience the entry of a new and ratherunconventional party into the locus of Germany’spower in Berlin’s Reichstag parallel in form andcontent the Greens’ entry into the Bundestag thirtyyears before, at that time still in Bonn?

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05concLusion

On a train ride from Prague to Vienna in June 2012,Markovits sat with one of his dearest friends, a life-long Green activist, employee of the Green-affiliatedHeinrich Böll Foundation, and an immensely astuteobserver of German, European, and global politicswhose opinions Markovits has come to respectimmensely over their lengthy friendship. At one point,Markovits asked his friend what his opinions were ofthe Pirates in German politics. The response wasprompt and unequivocal: disorganized, immature,aimless, chaotic, simplistic in their views, unsophisti-cated in their theories, hopelessly out of touch withtheir aims. When Markovits responded that hisfriend’s characterization of the Pirates sounded liter-ally identical, verbatim so, to the views that Markovitshad repeatedly heard many activists in the SocialDemocratic Party and the trade unions—both ofwhich Markovits was researching in the late 1970sand early 1980s—profess about the Greens, hisfriend started to laugh and replied: “Touche! You arespot-on correct!”

The Green response to and characterization of thesepolitical newcomers sounds very much like estab-lishment talking to challenger, insider referring tooutsider, elder communicating with younger. Couldindeed the very recent and still short-lived successesof the Pirate Party be the byproduct of the sustainedand now established successes of the Green Party?Could the spunkiness and funkiness of the Piratesbespeak the stodginess and normalcy of the Greens?Could the latter’s transformation from its former iden-tity as the enfant terrible of German politics into itscurrent being as Germany’s goody two shoes“ecological reform party” have yielded the opportunityspace for a new challenger of the status quo toemerge and become successful—and thus estab-lished—in doing so?150 Are we merely witnessing a

rondo in general politics, a political “Reigen” to usethe unforgettable words of the wonderful Viennesedramatist Arthur Schnitzler? Who is to know?

But there are some things that we do, in fact, know,with some modicum of certainty. First, generation inall its variants greatly matters in politics. In terms of itssheer biological dimension, it is safe to say thatyouth—let us say up to the age of 35, precisely SocialDemocracy’s erstwhile threshold that separated“young” from “old” Social Democrats—is moreconducive to all kinds of experimentations in life, andthus in politics as well, creating a situation in whichthe engagement with extremes, or deviations fromand challenges of the norm, are more common thanin middle or advanced age. It is merely an empiricalreality—though not a conceptual exigency or somekind of theoretically compelling generality—that youngpeople in most advanced industrial democracies ofthe post-World War II period tended to be moreengaged in and attracted to the left side of the polit-ical spectrum than the right. Just think of how this wasclearly not the case in the interwar era when fascismin its varied guises attracted millions of youth andwas—explicitly—extolled as a revolt of the youngagainst the staleness and conformity of the old andestablished. This is not to say that youths haveremained immune to right wing politics in the postwarera in these advanced industrial democracies: Again,just think of football hooliganism, the pre-eminence ofyoung people—mainly, though not exclusively, men—in various neo-Nazi and far right movements andorganizations in Germany as well as other Europeancountries. But in terms of the preponderant ethicalvalues and political directions that informed the bulkof 18 to 35 year olds in Europe, North America, andsimilar societies in the postwar period, it would besafe to label them left-of-center. The presence of

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concLusion

leftism among these youth also increased massivelywith the quantity and quality of education. Thus,universities were the bastions of right wing reactionand fascism in Germany and Austria from the latenineteenth century until the end of World War II, andeven quite possibly the beginning of the 1960s. It isprecisely in this dawning of the era that spawned theGreens in the altered world of universities and theirimmediate environment that became loci of protestand mounted serious challenges to the extant ortho-doxies of capitalism as well as conventional leftism asmanifested by social democracy and communism.After all, it is not by chance that the Greens inGermany became especially powerful and prominentin places in which universities played an importantrole, and that their functional equivalents in othercountries, like the United States, flourished in exactlyparallel environments. It is not an accident that ourvery own college town of Ann Arbor with theUniversity of Michigan at its core became the cradleof SDS, arguably the most important conceptualprogenitor and organizational representative of theAmerican New Left which—with its famed Port HuronStatement authored mainly by Tom Hayden in June of1962—also exercised great influence on theEuropean and German New Left. Thus, it is merelylogical that Ann Arbor’s sister city in Germany isTübingen, in which the Greens have played a crucialrole over the past three decades. Ann Arbor andTübingen represent prototypical milieus that fosteredthe post-materialist politics expressed by the Greensin Germany and their structural equivalents in theUnited States. Were the American political system aparliamentary one with an electoral arrangementsimilar to that in continental Europe, Germany inparticular, we can state with reasonable certainty thatAnn Arbor, too, would sport a city council that had 30percent Greens as its representatives instead ofbeing run by a virtual monopoly of Green-likeDemocrats. Indeed, the catch-all nature of theDemocratic Party in the United States makes it all butan iron-clad requirement that the American equivalentof the German Greens operate within that party. Andit is precisely this wing of the Democratic Party thathas enjoyed a near-hegemony in governing Ann Arborfor many a decade.

Second, we also know that in addition to the physicaland biological dimensions that give age its power as

a social and political variable, its generational attrib-utes are at least as powerful, if not more so. After all,Karl Mannheim’s fine writings make it amply clear thatcertain common events which people experiencebond them together for the rest of their lives. Themore marked such experiences are, the morepowerful a bond it generates that shape a certainage’s generational commonality. And few experienceshave created a greater commonality of such kind thanthe late 1960s: Just think, this age has given an entiregeneration its name in at least three languages ofwhich we know, perhaps many more:Achtundsechziger, Soixandhuitards, Sixty-eighters!And it is precisely this generational experience—thisage in the Mannheimian sense—that provided thevery foundation and also the common glue for thepolitical formation called the Greens.

Third, it appears that Maurice Duverger’s brilliantinsight of the “contagion from the left” pertains interms of the Greens’ demonstrable and immenseinfluence on German society and culture of the pastthree decades. While writing about a very differentepoch—namely the 1950s and the early 1960s—andconfining his argument to the internal structure ofpolitical parties in the advanced industrial democra-cies which, so Duverger, witnessed the rise of themodern mass party largely emanating from the Left towhich the Center and the Right had to respond byadapting their respective party structures to that ofthe Left’s to compete electorally in the political marketplace; Duverger also viewed this contagion to be athematic one meaning that the Left’s placing issueson the political agenda obligated the other parties tocommit what the Germans have so aptly termedThemenklau. Remember, flattery in this case, too,bespeaks the highest form of compliment. There canbe no doubt that in terms of the agenda-settingdimension, the contagion from the Greens (if not ipsofacto the Left) has informed virtually every importantfacet of German politics. Entire areas owe theirsalience to the Greens. As we argue throughout ourwork, nowhere has this been more pronounced thanin the four issue areas that define the core of Greenidentity: ecology, women, peace, and, perhaps to alesser but still considerable extent, grass rootsdemocracy. Indeed, it would not be too far-fetched toargue that these topics became the very core of whatit means to be “Left” today. It is along these axes that

38


left-ness is debated, constructed, and lived. Thus,while Markovits was on the one hand not very happywhen his book The German Left: Red, Green andBeyond appeared in German under the title Grünschlägt Rot [green beats red] because he was wellaware that many would interpret this to pertain merelyto the electoral realm of politics where clearly thiswas not the case when the book appeared in the1990s and has remained erroneous—with notableexceptions on local levels and the aforementionedGreen success in the state of Baden-Württemberg—to this day151; he was very happy, on the other hand,because the German title captured spiffily theessence of his overall argument: that in terms ofdefining the leading topics and key identities of whatit has meant to be left in Germany and comparableadvanced capitalist societies of the past threedecades, the Greens had a massive edge over theReds. This is not to say that core red topics hadbecome irrelevant or that the ills that caused them toemerge had all been cured; far from it. It is merely tostate that in terms of their being cutting edge, in termsof their innovative form and content, the core axesdefining Green politics and identity have enjoyed agreater salience and relevance than their red coun-terparts in defining what it means to be left—i.e.,progressive—today in Germany and other compa-rable places of advanced capitalist countries withliberal democratic political systems.

Have the Greens attained their articulated goals in allfour of their central topics? Not even close! Havethey earned the right to celebrate a few successes insome of them? Absolutely! Above all, the Greens’success as agenda setters remains uncontested. Allof the above-mentioned four concepts have enteredGermany’s political vernacular; all of them remain atthe heart of the country’s political debates. And thereis no sign whatsoever of any disappearing in thefuture, near or far.

Finally, in a political culture where colors have attaineda political significance that remains second to noneand has been unparalleled when compared to othercomparable countries (with the possible exception ofAustria which, too, is part of this German-speakingpolitical tradition); a place where colors in politicaldiscourse have assumed unrivalled iconic character-istics that literally everybody recognizes and knows—

just think of the blacks, the reds, the yellows, thebrowns—the Greens are the only ones whose colorin contemporary global discourse attains a clarity thatnone of the other political actors can even approxi-mate. Put differently, when Markovits lectures aboutGerman politics all over the world, including his youngundergraduates enrolling in a European politicscourse for the very first time at any of the manyAmerican universities where he has taught in histhirty-nine years as an academic, he would completelylose his audience were he to speak of the blacks orthe browns or the yellows, even the reds whendescribing German parties, ideologies, approaches,or values. Nobody would understand what thesecolors were to connote, what they meant. This,however, is never the case with the Greens. His first-year students—or audiences in distant lands—maynot know anything about Fundis and Realos; mostlikely could not name even one Green politician,perhaps not even Joschka Fischer, nor would theyknow how many seats the Greens have in the currentBundestag. But they all know what the color greenconnotes way beyond the German Greens andGermany; they know that it stands for sustainability,for protecting the environment, for organic farming, forprotecting the earth, for being kind to animals, forbeing humane and thus human. In a sense, the colorgreen has become the only one of the many colors ofGerman politics that is truly international and widelyrecognized well beyond the confines of Germany. Thecolor green has attained an international presenceand recognition that the color red clearly had until thelate 1960s: not only instant recognition and affinityamong like-minded people on an international scale,but also a sense of being progressive, of being in theforefront of ideas and of a certain struggle. Put it thisway: When impartial non-experts think of the ideal-typical social democracy, they think of Sweden. Mostneutrals and casual followers of politics would asso-ciate the Tories as the prototypical conservatives.Communism is still mainly identified with the defunctSoviet Union and not the regimes that continue tobear its name, least of all China. Nazism continues tocrowd out any potential rivals when it comes to therepresentation of fascism. Just think how contempo-rary Russian, Polish, and Greek fascists have appro-priated the symbols of the very regime that brutalizedtheir countries during World War II. But when theworld thinks of Greens as a concrete political entity,

39


as a political institution, as a political actor functioningin real time and space, it thinks of the GermanGreens. There can be no doubt that the GermanGreens’—much more than any other country’s—verybeing and activities over the past thirty years havebest embodied the amazing shift in conscience andconsciousness that the world has come to associatewith the term “Green.” There can be no greater praisefor a brand’s immense success! Our hearty congrat-ulations for a job well done! Here is to thirty more!

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1 This paper emerged from andrei Markovits’s preparations for being thekeynote speaker at a workshop entitled “creating participatorydemocracy: green politics in germany since 1983” to be held on 28february and 1 March 2013 in the german studies (ncgs) seminar andWorkshop series held at the university of north carolina – chapel hill.We gratefully acknowledge financial assistance by the university ofMichigan; the heinrich-boell-foundation in Washington, dc; and theamerican institute for contemporary german studies, without which thispublication would not have been possible. indeed, it is our great honorand delight to be also celebrating with our contribution the institute’s thir-tieth birthday as well. aicgs’ existence has enriched our lives immea-surably! here is to thirty more!

Throughout this text, we will be referring to the “greens,” which in mostcases will denote the party officially called bündnis ‘90/die grünen. butwe will also use this term when discussing the party die grünen prior toits merger with bündnis ‘90 in 1993. We defer to the intelligence andattentiveness of our readers to discern in each case what we mean by“greens.” We are reasonably certain that our catholic, liberal, and free-floating usage of the term will in no way hinder the readers’ fine compre-hension of the particular passage or the text as a whole.

2 Markovits was right there in the Stadthalle in bad godesberg, cele-brating with the greens, just as he was in January 1987 in thebiskuitenhalle in bonn, welcoming their triumphant return to thebundestag nary four years later. Klaver was not yet born for either ofthese momentous events.

3 andrei s. Markovits and philip s. gorski, The German Left: Red,Green and Beyond (new york: oxford university press, 1993).

4 der bundeswahlleiter, “Wahl Zum 10. deutschen bundestag am 6.März 1983” (2012).

5 This exceptional result was the consequence of a decision by thefederal constitutional court to suspend the nationwide 5 percent elec-toral threshold—Fünf-Prozent Hürde—for the 1990 election only,choosing instead to require parties to obtain 5 percent of the vote ineither the former east or West.

6 der bundeswahlleiter, “bundestagswahl 2009: ergebnisse der WahlZum 17. deutschen bundestag” (2009): 1,2.

7 andrei s. Markovits and philip s. gorski, The German Left: Red,Green and Beyond (new york: oxford university press, 1993).

8 friederike von Tiesenhausen,“die grünen sind Keine Volkspartei,”Financial Times Deutschland, 29 March 2011, <http://www.ftd.de/politik/deutschland/:erster-gruener-ministerpraesident-die-gruenen-sind-keine-volkspartei/60032311.html>.

9 statistisches Landesamt baden-Württemberg, “endgültiges ergebnisder Landtagswahl am 27.03.2011,” stuttgart, 2011, <http://www.statistik-bw.de/wahlen/Landtagswahl_2011/Land.asp> (27 July 2012).

10 friederike von Tiesenhausen,“die grünen sind Keine Volkspartei,”Financial Times Deutschland, 29 March 2011, <http://www.ftd.de/politik/deutschland/:erster-gruener-ministerpraesident-die-gruenen-sind-keine-volkspartei/60032311.html>.

11 i. blühdorn, f. Krause, and T. scharf, “The green agenda.environmental politics and policy in germany,” opus.bath.ac.uk (1995):24, 25.

12 ibid.

13 ibid.

14 J.L. cohen and a. arato, “The german green party: a Movementbetween fundamentalism and Modernism,” Dissent 31:3 (1984): 327-32.

15 filmed in 1944, the film remains popular to this day, despite its nsprovenance. Viewings traditionally happen in the winter, with theater-goers drinking glühwein or feuerzangenbowle.

16 dc bündnis 90/die grünen ortsverband Washington, “Über uns,”<http://gruene-washington.de/ueber-uns/> (27 July 2012).

17 ibid.

18 florian gathmann, “plus 1200 in Zwei Monaten,” Der Spiegel, 12

March 2011, <http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/neuer-gruener-mitglieder-rekord-plus-1200-in-zwei-monaten-a-750333.html> (27 July2012).

19 ibid.

20 brigit Kruse and Mike szymanski, “streitgespräch Zwischen piratenund grünen,” Süddeutsche.de, 26 february 2012, <http://www.sued-deutsche.de/bayern/streitgespraech-zwischen-piraten-und-gruenen-das-netz-ist-viel-zu-gross-fuer-eine-partei-1.1293026> (27 July 2012).

21 staff of the heinrich böll foundation, “history of the heinrich böllfoundation,” http://www.boell.org/web/150-283.html (27 July 2012).

22 susanne dittrich, ed., Annual Report 2010 (berlin: heinrich böllfoundation, e. V., 2011): 4.

23 ibid.

24 ibid.

25 full disclosure: Markovits has greatly benefited from the heinrich böllstiftung’s generosity over many years, for which he remains immenselygrateful.

26 rainer barzel, “bekanntmachung Von rechenschaftsberichten 1983der politischen parteien,” 10/2172 (1984): 10,11.

27 deutscher bundestag, “bekanntmachung Vonrechenschaftsberichten des politischen parteien für das Kalenderjahr1998 (1. Teil-bundestagsparteien),” (1999): 84,85.

28 deutscher bundestag, “bekanntmachung Vonrechenschaftsberichten politischer parteien für das Kalenderjahr 2012(1. Teil-bundestagsparteien),” (2012): 133,134.

29 rainer barzel,“bekanntmachung Von rechenschaftsberichten 1983der politischen parteien,” 10/2172 (1984): 10,11.

30 deutscher bundestag, “bekanntmachung Vonrechenschaftsberichten politischer parteien für das Kalenderjahr 2012(1. Teil-bundestagsparteien),” (2012): 133,134.

31 andrei s. Markovits and philip s. gorski, The German Left: Red,Green and Beyond (new york: oxford university press, 1993); 26.

32 ibid., 27.

33 ibid., 272.

34 see www.gruene.de, “30 grüne Jahre (9): anti-atom-bewegung”2010, <http://www.gruene.de/partei/30-gruene-jahre-30-gruene-geschichten/30-gruene-jahre-9-anti-atom-bewegung.html> (27 July2012).

35 der bundestag, “Vereinbarung Zwischen der bundesregierung undden energieversorgungsunternehmen Vom 14. Juni 2000,” (2000),<http://www.bmu.de/files/pdfs/allgemein/application/pdf/atomkonsens.pdf> (27 July 2012).

36 ibid.

37 see www.bundestag.de, “Laufzeitverlängerung Vonatomkraftwerken,” 2010, <http://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2010/32009392_kw43_de_atompolitik/index.html> (27 July2012).

38 christian deutschländer, “csu bekommt Öko-Konzept,” Merkur-Online.de, 18 June 2010, <www.merkur online.de/nachrichten/politik/bekommt oeko konzept mm 809949.html> (27 July 2012).

39 Translated from “aus Verantwortung vor der schöpfung”; ibid.

40 “...ganz oberbayern soll ‚klimaneutral‘ werden, bayern soll geld nurnoch unter sozialen, ethischen und ökologischen Maßstäben investieren– und deutschland soll das solar programm aus rot-grünerregierungszeit neu auflegen.” see christian deutschländer, “csubekommt Öko-Konzept,” Merkur-Online.de, 18 June 2010, <www.merkuronline.de/nachrichten/politik/bekommt oeko konzept mm 809949.html>(27 July 2012).

41 ibid.

42 dagmar dehmer, “csu und fdp streiten Über genmais,” Der

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noTes

Tagesspiegel, 8 october 2009, <http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/deutschland/koalitionsverhandlungen csuund fdpstreiten uebergenmais/1611754.html> (27 July 2012).

43 spiegel online, “grüne Wehren sich gegen Themenklau,” DerSpiegel, 12 august 2009, <http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/wahlkampf-gruene-wehren-sich-gegen-themenklau-a-641993.html> (27 July 2012).

44 sebastian fischer and phillip Wittrock, “die neue anti-akw-bewegung,” der spiegel, 15 March 2011, <http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/schwarz-gelbe-atomwende-die-neue-anti-akw-bewe-gung-a-751078.html> (27 July 2012).

45 ibid.

46 Jens König, “Wie grün Wird deutschland noch?” Stern.de, 6 april2011, <http://www.stern.de/politik/deutschland/umfragehoch-fuer-trittin-co-wie-gruen-wird-deutschland-noch-1671492.html> (5 august 2012).

47 die Landeswahlleiterin, “Wahlen Zum Landtag Von Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,” Landeswahlleiterin Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,<http://www.statistik-mv.de/cms2/sTaM_prod/sTaM/de/start/_Landeswahlleiter/Landeswahlleiter/landtagswahlen/index.jsp> (27 July 2012).

48 rheinland-pfalz Landeswahlleiter, “endgültiges ergebnis derLandtagswahl 2011 steht fest,” 2011, <http://www.wahlen.rlp.de/ltw/presse/lwl11017.html> (27 July 2012).

49 statistisches Landesamt baden-Württemberg, “endgültiges ergebnisder Landtagswahl am 27.03.2011,” stuttgart, 2011, <http://www.statistik-bw.de/wahlen/Landtagswahl_2011/Land.asp> (27 July 2012).

50 friederike von Tiesenhausen,“die grünen sind Keine Volkspartei,”Financial Times Deutschland, 29 March 2011,<http://www.ftd.de/politik/deutschland/:erster-gruener-ministerpraesident-die-gruenen-sind-keine-volkspartei/60032311.html>.

51 see www.dw.de, “grüne feiern historischen erfolg,” 28 March 2011,<http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,14946766,00.html> (27 July 2012).

52 ibid.

53 ibid.

54 see “Über uns,” <www.klima-lugendetektor.de/about> (27 July 2012).

55 see “plötzlich sind alle Klimaretter. Wirklich?” <www.klimaretter.info>(27 July 2012).

56 bundesministerium für familie, senioren, frauen und Jugend,“Mütter des grundgesetzes,” (berlin: 2011), <http://www.hs-wismar.de/fileadmin/user_upload/dokumente/gleichstellung/M%c3%bctter_des_grundgesetzes.pdf> (28 July 2012).

57 ibid.

58 ibid.

59 M.f. feldkamp and c. sommer, “parlaments- und Wahlstatistik desdeutschen bundestages: 1949-2002/03,” Deutsche Bundestag, ReferatÖffentlichkeitsarbeit (2003): 16.

60 see www.gruene.de, “Meilensteine der frauenbewegung,” ed. astridrothe-beinlich (2011), <http://www.gruene.de/themen/frauenpolitik/meilensteine-der-frauenbewegung.html> (28 July 2012).


62 see www.gruene.de, “Weshalb haben bündnis 90/die grünen,”<http://www.gruene-partei.de/cms/service/rubrik/3/3984.haeufig_gestellte_fragen.htm#a3> (28 July 2012).

“im grünen frauenstatut ist festgelegt, dass mindestens die hälfte allerÄmter und Mandate frauen zusteht. bei Wahlen zu Vorständen oder beider aufstellung von Listen für parlamentswahlen werden deshalb dieungeraden plätze von frauen besetzt - der erste platz ist also immereiner frau vorbehalten…das wirkt sich auch auf unsere politik aus:chancengerechtigkeit für frauen und Männer ist eine unserer zentralenpolitischen forderungen und da gibt es noch viel zu tun. Wir wollenrahmenbedingungen dafür schaffen, dass frauen im berufslebengleiche chancen haben, und auch dafür, dass im alltagsleben berufs-und familienarbeit gerecht zwischen frauen und Männern aufgeteilt

werden kann.”


64 nathalie sopacua, “auch Liberale frauen drängen Jetzt aufparteiinterne Quote,” 2011,<http://www.frauenrat.de/deutsch/infopool/informationen/informationdetail/jahres_archiv/2012/article/auch-liberale-frauen-draengen-jetzt-auf-parteiinterne-quote/parteien.html> (29July 2012).

65 Jan almstedt, “csu entdeckt frauenquote,” 2012, www.spd.de<http://www.spd.de/aktuelles/news/4280/20101005_csu_quote.html>(30 July 2012).


67 W. cornelißen, “gender-datenreport,” Kommentierter datenreport zurgleichstellung von frauen und Männern in der bundesrepublikdeutschland. erstellt im auftrag des bMfsfJ durch das deutscheJugendinstitut e.V. in Zusammenarbeit mit dem statistischenbundesamt. dJi (2005): 370.

68 see www.telekom.com, “frauenquote: Mehr frauen an die spitze,”2012, http://www.telekom.com/konzern/mitarbeiter/diversity-frauen-quote/5186 (30 July 2012).

69 igr/afp/reuters, “Ver.di Vorstand raümt posten für eine frau,”Spiegel Online, 1 March 2011, <http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/frauenquote-im-management-ver-di-vorstand-raeumt-posten-fuer-eine-frau-a-748375-druck.html> (30 July 2012).

70 it would lead far beyond the scope of this work to discuss how andwhy most of the old Left’s institutions not only came to accept bourgeoisculture, but in fact reveled in it, including in its oppressive and confiningdimensions. Just remember how audiences used to dress for the operaand theater in the capitals of the former communist countries of centraland eastern europe, and how much more straight and square and bour-geois they were in their dark suits and boring ties when compared totheir counterparts in the West.

71 Karl-rudolf Korte,“Kandidatenaufstellung (Kreiswahlvorschlag undLandeslisten),” 2009, <http://www.bpb.de/politik/innenpolitik/bundestagswahlen/62551/kandidatenaufstellung> (30 July2012).


73 Karl-rudolf Korte,“Kandidatenaufstellung (Kreiswahlvorschlag undLandeslisten),” 2009, <http://www.bpb.de/politik/innenpolitik/bundestagswahlen/62551/kandidatenaufstellung> (30 July2012).


75 see www.cdu.edu, “das frauenquorum in der cdu,” cdu-bundesgeschäftsstelle, 2001, <http://www.cdu.de/doc/pdfc/071022-broschuere-frauenquroum.pdf>: 3 (30 July 2012).

76 ibid.

“Wir müssen uns noch intensiver um die Mitwirkung und förderung vonfrauen auf allen ebenen unserer partei bemühen. dies ist eine wichtigeaufgabe für alle ebenen der partei. noch immer ist der anteil der frauenunter den Mitgliedern der cdu mit ca. 25 prozent zu gering. auch unterunseren amts- und Mandatsträgern sind frauen eine Minderheit. unsergrundsatz steht fest: ‚frauen sollen an parteiämtern in der cdu und anöffentlichen Mandaten mindestens zu einem drittel beteiligt sein.”


78 ibid.

79 dpa, “csu beschließt frauenquote,” Die Zeit, 30 october 2010,<http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2010-10/csu-frauenquote-

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parteitag> (30 July 2012).


81 ibid.

82 see www.liberale-frauen.de, “Über uns: Wir Mischen uns aktiv in diepolitik ein!” <http://www.liberale-frauen.de/ueber-uns/index.html> (30July 2012).

83 “Männerriege der fdp-oberen”

84 oliver Klassen and raimon Klein, “Liberale chauvis,”Sueddeutsche.de, 12 January 2012, <http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/frauen-in-der-fdp-liberale-chauvis-1.1255996> (30 July 2012).

85 ibid. “die fdp ist ein Männerverein. sie haben in der fdp unheimlichgegenwind, wenn sie zu den Liberalen frauen zählen.”

86 ibid. “Zur begründung sagte die Wiesbadener stadtverordnete lautZeitung, es herrsche ‚ein frauen- und familienfeindlicher Ton‘ in der fdpauf kommunaler, Landes- und bundesebene.“

87 nathalie sopacua, “auch Liberale frauen drängen Jetzt aufparteiinterne Quote,” 2011,<http://www.frauenrat.de/deutsch/infopool/informationen/informationdetail/jahres_archiv/2012/article/auch-liberale-frauen-draengen-jetzt-auf-parteiinterne-quote/parteien.html> (29July 2012).

88 roger cohen, “post-War pacifism ends for germany,” The New YorkTimes (1999).

89 b.c. rathbun, “The Myth of german pacifism,” German Politics andSociety 24:2 (2006): 73.

90 roger cohen, “post-War pacifism ends for germany,” The New YorkTimes (1999).

91 b.c. rathbun, “The Myth of german pacifism,” German Politics andSociety 24:2 (2006): 72.

92 ibid., 74.

93 ibid., 75.

94 Joschka fischer, “die Katastrophe in bosnien und dieKonsequenzen für unsere partei bündnis 90/die grünen,” Ein Brief andie Bundestagsfraktion und an die Partei, 30 July 1995,<http://www.oeko-net.de/kommune/briefe/kom201.htm>.

95 Kerstin Miller, claudia roth, Jürgen Trittin, Ludger Volmer, “Wohinführt die forderung nach einer Militärischen interventionspflicht gegenVölkermord?” Ein offener Brief an die Mitglieder von Bündnis 90 / DieGrünen, 31 october 1995, <http://www.oeko-net.de/kommune/briefe/kom202.htm>

96 ibid.

97 roger cohen, “post-War pacifism ends for germany,” The New YorkTimes (1999). of course, german troops had previously engaged invarious missions outside of germany. but all of these entailed rescueefforts, disaster relief, and supply deliveries. none of them entailedactual combat.

98 stephen brown, “germany: abstained on Libya no-fly Zone duerisks (sic),” Reuters, 18 March 2011, <http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/18/libya-un-germany-idusLde72g2iK20110318>.

99 see www.fdp.de, “friedenspolitik ist die Maxime,” 2011,<http://www.fdp.de/friedenspolitik-ist-die-Maxime/1660c12963i1p211/index.html> (4 august 2012). “deutscheaußenpolitik ist friedenspolitik.”

100 alexander boettcher, Deutsche Außenpolitik Ist Friedenspolitik(norderstedt: grin Verlag, 2007): 10.

101 see www.fdp.de, “friedenspolitik ist die Maxime,” 29 august 2011,http://www.fdp.de/friedenspolitik-ist-die-Maxime/1660c12963i1p211/index.html. “die deutsche außen- undsicherheitspolitik folgt einer Linie, nach der Militäreinsätze nur ein letztesMittel sind.”

102 ibid., 76.

103 see www.gruene-bundestag.de, “bundestag beendet Wehrpflicht,”

2011, <http://www.gruene-bundestag.de/themen/sicherheitspolitik/bundestag-beendet-wehrpflicht.html> (4 september2012). “am donnerstag hat der bundestag mit der Verabschiedung desWehrrechtsänderungsgesetzes 2011 die aussetzung der allgemeinenWehrpflicht zum 01.07. 2011 beschlossen. die aussetzung derWehrpflicht in deutschland ist ein historischer, längst überfälliger schritt,den wir ausdrücklich begrüßen.”

104 european commission, “Values of europeans,” Eurobarometer 69: 1(november 2008), <http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb69/eb69_values_en.pdf>.

105 european commission, “Welche der folgenden Werte sind für siepersönlich am Wichtigsten?” 2009, <http://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/151354/umfrage/meinung-ueber-die-wichtigsten-werte/> (4 august 2012).

106 “Zauberwort”

107 M. Klein and J.W. falter, Der Lange Weg Der Grünen (Munich:beck, 2003): 87.

108 ibid., 88.

109 in duisburg in 1987, the greens modified their statutes regardingEhrenamtlichkeit. after the ninth bundesversammlung of the greenparty, top party positions would receive a salary, thus providing for aleadership composed of more heterogeneous socioeconomic back-grounds.

110 in this instance, of course, the party engaged one of the key predica-ments of democratic theory and practice so prominently discussed byMax Weber in his legendary essay on the state and professional politicsentitled “politics as a Vocation.” Therein, Weber raises all the conceptu-ally relevant points—both pro and con—of having professional politiciansreceive remuneration for their job as opposed to having offices filled bywealthy amateurs who do not need any remuneration for their livelihood.

111 andrei s. Markovits and philip s. gorski, The German Left: Red,Green and Beyond (new york: oxford university press, 1993); 124.

112 ibid.

113 ibid.


115 ibid., 90-91.

116 ibid., 97.

117 “grüne heben Trennung Von amt und Mandat auf,” Spiegel Online,23 May 2003, <http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/urabstimmung-gruene-heben-trennung-von-amt-und-mandat-auf-a-249949.html> (4august 2012).

118 ibid.

119 ibid.


121 ibid., 92.

122 The Rotationsprinzip was modified from two years to four years inMay of 1986, before being done away with entirely in 1991.


124 ibid.

125 ibid.

126 see www.gruene.de, “30 grüne Jahre (14): parteitag in neumünster1991,” 5 november 2010, <http://www.gruene.de/partei/30-gruene-jahre-30-gruene-geschichten/30-gruene-jahre-14-parteitag-in-neumuenster-1991.html> (4 august 2012).

127 ibid. “die sprecher/innen wurden von drei auf zweibegrenzt…außerdem wurden die politische und organisatorischegeschäftsführung auf zwei schultern verteilt, die rotation abgeschafftund der Länderrat als ‘kleiner parteitag’ eingerichtet.”


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129 ibid., 96.

130 see www.gruene.de, “30 grüne Jahre (14): parteitag in neumünster1991,” 5 november 2010, <http://www.gruene.de/partei/30-gruene-jahre-30-gruene-geschichten/30-gruene-jahre-14-parteitag-in-neumuenster-1991.html> (4 august 2012).

131 for photos, see Spiegel Online: http://www.spiegel.de/foto-strecke/30-jahre-gruene-baerte-blumen-turnschuh-eid-fotostrecke-50344-2.html

132 “das Vertrauen der basis ist nicht da,” Der Spiegel, 4 april 1983,<http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-14023622.html> (4 august 2012).

133 ibid.

134 The sartorial appearances, habits, and conventions of thebundestag entered the news in the summer of 2012. Süddeutsche.dedescribes this incident as follows: “for some it is the ‘most superfluousarticle of clothing in the world,’ for others it goes to the bundestag’s verycore and value: two parliamentary representatives may not sit next to thepresident of the bundestag—because they do not wear ties.” The necktie as a dress code for men is ostensibly designed to protect the dignityof the bundestag.



137 ibid. “Turnschuh-Minister”

138 for photos, see www.boell.de: http://www.boell.de/alt/de/13_archiv/4374.html

139 interestingly, this passion for luxurious watches has a long historyamong left-leaning politicians of a very different orientation than fischer.Leonid brezhnev, erich honecker, Mao Zedong, fidel castro, and cheguevara all owned at least one rolex.

140 r. Michels, s. reker, T. seim, g. uhl, “fischer: WashingtonWichtiger als Moskau,” RP Online, 20 May 2005, <http://www.rp-online.de/politik/deutschland/fischer-washington-wichtiger-als-moskau-1.1601764> (5 august 2012).

141 ibid.

142 dirk Kurbjuwelt,“papal blessing Marks end of an era for greens,”Spiegel Online, 26 september 2011, <http://www.spiegel.de/interna-tional/germany/from-protest-party-to-mainstream-papal-blessing-marks-end-of-an-era-for-greens-a-788340.html> (6 august 2012).

143 for photos, see www.boell.de: http://www.boell.de/alt/de/13_archiv/4416.html

144 “grüne anschläge 25 Jahre grüne plakatkunst,” heinrich-böll-stiftung, <http://www.boell.de/alt/de/13_archiv/4264.html> (2 august2012).


146 ibid.

147 “grüne anschläge 25 Jahre grüne plakatkunst,” heinrich-böll-stiftung, <http://www.boell.de/alt/de/13_archiv/4264.html> (2 august2012).

148 ibid.

149 “die sechzehnte Wahlperiode 1990-94,” bündnis 90/die grünenbundestagsfraktion, <http://www.gruene-bundestag.de/fraktion/geschichte/16-wahlperiode/seite-1.html> (6august 2012).

150 brigit Kruse and Mike szymanski, “streitgespräch Zwischen piratenund grünen,” Süddeutsche.de, 26 february 2012, <http://www.sued-deutsche.de/bayern/streitgespraech-zwischen-piraten-und-gruenen-das-netz-ist-viel-zu-gross-fuer-eine-partei-1.1293026> (27 July 2012).

151 it is interesting that when the greens did indeed attain electoralsuccesses in 2010 and 2011 that surpassed the returns attained by thesocial democrats, a number of articles in german periodicals praised

Markovits’s and his colleague gorski’s presumed prescience and allegedclairvoyance in predicting just such a scenario fifteen years in advance.

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THIRTY YEARS OF BUNDESTAGPRESENCE: A TALLY OF THEGREENS’ IMPACT ON THE FEDERALREPUBLIC OF GERMANY’S POLITICALLIFE AND PUBLIC CULTURE

Andrei S. MarkovitsJoseph Klaver

AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR CONTEMPORARY GERMAN STUDIES THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

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