what’s become of the german greens

7/28/2019 WHATS BECOME OF THE GERMAN GREENS

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German Green Party, Main Geographical Bases


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new left review 81may june 201395

joachim jachnow

WHATS BEC OME OF

THE GERMAN GREENS?

On 24 march 1999 the rst bombs ell on Belgrades powerplants and water supply, knocking out the citys electricity anddestroying vital inrastructure, actories, railways, bridges.1The German Lutwae was back in the Balkans, 58 years

almost to the day ater the last bombardment o the Yugoslav capitalin 1941, its strikes uncannily repeating General Lhrs inamous strat-egy o destroying the administrative and logistical centres o an alreadyopen citynow described, in the nato jargon o the day, as targets o

dual purpose. Germanys military resurgence could hardly have beenmore thunderously announced. Its Air Force few almost ve hundredraids in Operation Allied Force, against what remained o Yugoslavia,already sapped by economic decay, Western intervention and ethnicnationalismoten externally promoted, with Austro-German diplo-macy to the ore. nato bombardment not only let dead civilians, burnthospitals and ruined schools in its wake, but also served to escalate thetragedy it was allegedly intended to prevent, pouring petrol on the re,

intensiying civil-war crimes and provoking the mass fight o civilians.The Green Party leader Joschka Fischer had been right when he declaredin 1994 that the engagement o German orces in countries whereHitlers troops had stormed during the Second World War would onlyan the fames o confict.2

But Fischer was now Foreign Minister and Vice-Chancellor o Germanysrst RedGreen Federal government. His predictions orgotten, Fischer

and the Green Party leadership saw it as Germanys moral obligation,i not to storm across Yugoslavia once more, then to drop bombs on itsterritory rom a sae heightand, naturally, or humanitarian ends. The


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96nlr 81Green rank and le were more reluctant: no Western European party hadbeen so clearly identied with the demands o the peace movement ornuclear disarmament and the abolition o nato. The German Greenshad deep historical roots in the opposition to West German militariza-

tion and in solidarity movements with anti-imperialist struggles. Butater long internal battles, the party had become an established playerwithin the German parliamentary system. That entering the Federal gov-ernment involved endorsing both nato and the market economy wastacitly understood. Green mep Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a long-term associ-ate o Fischer, had been preparing the ground or military interventionsince the start o the Yugoslav wars o secession and was now calling orground troopsa land invasion. Nevertheless, the 1998 Green election

maniesto stated that the German Greens would oppose both militarypeace enorcement and combat missions; it looked orward to the roll-back, not the expansion, onato.

These maniesto commitments were abandoned a ew months laterwhen the Greens, with a mere 6.7 per cent o the vote in the September1998 election, signed up to a coalition agreement with Schrders spdthat gave nato pride o place. Fischer himsel had been brieed on

the Clinton Administrations plans or Yugoslavia even beore enter-ing oce, during a trip to Washington with Schrder and Laontaine. 3As with every step in Fischers career, sel-advancement was marketedas a painul realization o higher truths, whose acceptance did notmean betraying but rather, more perectly ullling, ones ideals or abetter society. The German media almost unanimously promoted theSchrderFischer line or military intervention, backed up by intellectu-als like Gnter Grass and Jrgen Habermas; critics such as Peter Handke

1 I am grateul to Friedrich Heilmann and Frieder Otto Wol or taking the time toshare their political insights into the Green Partys trajectory with me.2 Ich bin der esten berzeugung, da deutsche Soldaten dort, wo im ZweitenWeltkrieg die Hitler-Soldateska gewtet hat, den Konfikt anheizen und nichtdeeskalieren wrden: Die Tageszeitung, 30 December 1994.3 The German media continues to reproduce the legend that the SchrderFischergovernment was caught unawares by the developments in Yugoslavia; it remainsunclear to what extent the frg governmentunder both Kohl and Schrderwasitsel a orce behind the Balkan war. On the other hand it has been suggested that theus, concerned that the eu might become more independent under strengthenedGerman hegemony, seized the opportunity to embed the frgs remilitarizationwithin a reounded nato. See Richard Holbrooke, America, A European Power,Foreign Aairs, vol. 74, no. 2, MarchApril 1995.


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jachnow:German Greens97were anathematized as riends o Serbian war criminals. Nevertheless, alarge part o the German public was reluctant to condone the use o armsin the name o human rights, the Greens electoral base very muchincluded; resistance grew rapidly. Anti-war Greens demanded that the

party convene an extraordinary congress, held at the height o the natobombing, with a massive police presence to protect the meeting romthe rank-and-le members. For a brie moment it seemed as though theGreens might split and the government all. Outdoing even Blairs rheto-ric, Fischer told the congress that Serbian repression o the Kosovarswould be another Auschwitz; anyone who opposed nato interventionwould thereby be responsible or a second holocaust. At the end o thedramatic, at times violent gathering, the ederal committees compro-

mise resolution, eectively a udge that gave the Green ministers carteblanche, was passed by 444 to 318. Thus the German militarys returnto oensive warare, explicitly outlawed by the Constitution becauseo Nazi war crimes, was legitimated through the moral exploitation othe very same.

Ater the party had renounced this oundation stone o Green politics,everything else was up or sale. In the atermath o the Yugoslav war

around a third o the membership let and was replaced by a new intake,more amenable to the leaderships orientation. Formerly deenders othe welare state and proponents o economic redistribution, the Greensbecame enthusiastic supporters o Schrders neoliberal Agenda 2010,which led to a tremendous plundering o public assets, social insuranceand pension unds, while repressing wages and granting tax cuts tobusiness worth billions o euroseectively, a redistribution o wealthrom poor to rich. Even more startling was the Greens complete sur-

render to Germanys nuclear industry; the struggle or the phase-out onuclear plants had been the partys core issue, surviving as the sine quanon o Green electoral promises through long years o parliamentarycompromise. Now the Greens were in government, worn-out reactorsreceived an extended lie or at least ten years, while hazardous storagedumps or nuclear waste and a debt guarantee or the entire industrywere pushed through by Green Environment Minister Jrgen Trittin,who remained indierent to the urther criminalization o anti-nuclear

protests under the SchrderFischer government. In a similar vein, theGreens approved new surveillance laws, restrictions on civil rights, dis-crimination against oreigners and militarization o the police, makingthe emergency legislation o 1968 which had then provoked so much


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98nlr 81unrest seem almost trivial in hindsight. It was the achievement o thespd and its Green partner to orce through legislative projects whichthey had successully obstructed themselves during the long years oopposition in the Kohl era.4

Grey annel suits

But was this political conversion o a ormerly dissident party really sounexpected? The phenomenon o the Green volte-ace is usually depictedin the German media as the nal steps in a slow progress towards matu-rity rather than a perversion: long-haired hippies in Birkenstocks nallydiscarding their utopian antasies in order to become mature statesmen

in grey fannel suits, willingly shouldering the burden o responsibil-ity. In this, many o the media chorus were narcissistically celebratingtheir own maturity, as they had once been part o the same movements.Acclaim or the new-model Greens refected the degree to which the dis-sident layers o post-68 German society had reconciled themselves toprevailing conditions; press sympathizers were oten ormer comradeswho had themselves undergone striking transormations. The para-digmatic case is Thomas Schmid, a boon companion o Fischer and

Cohn-Bendit in the 1970s Frankurt squatter milieu, briefy sharing itsgenerally sympathetic attitude towards the Red Army Fraction, convertedinto a proponent o pragmatic politics by 1983 and now editor-in-chieo Springers Die Welt, the publication which, along with the Bildzeitung,embodied the spirit o the Adenauer restoration par excellence, with itseditorial board adorned with ormer Nazis. More signicantly, erst-while organs o the alternative press such as Berlins tageszeitunghavelong since assumed a statesmanlike role, permitting the bare mini-

mum o non-conormist thought required to make la pense uniqueeasier to swallow.

He who pays the piper . . . ? Vulgar corruption is a common reproachrom the let, and some recently retired Greens have indeed shamelesslyprostituted themselves to their ormer oes in the nuclear or pharma-ceutical industries, or prices that earlier politicians, receiving theircomparably modest bribes rom industrial barons like Flick in darkened

4Anger at the RedGreen betrayal soon ound trenchant voice on the streets: protest-ers took up a cry rom the Weimar yearsWer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!(Who betrayed us? The Social Democrats!)and added an extra line: Wer war mitdabei? Die Grne Partei!(Who was with them? The Green Party!)


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jachnow:German Greens99backrooms, could only have dreamed o.5 It can certainly be argued thatsome o the Realosgrouped around Fischer and Cohn-Bendit, who hadcalled or reormist politics and participation in government rom theearly 1980s, aimed to seize the party as a vehicle or their own personal

ambitions with an eye to parliamentarisms golden troughs, as theyentered middle age with their dreams o revolutionary change behindthem. Christian Schmidt, a reelance journalist on the non-alignedlet, active in the squatters movement in the 80s, provides a detailed,not to say repugnant, account o the Frankurt Spontis and their rolein the Green Party during the 1980s and 90s in his 1998 Wir sind dieWahnsinnigen (We Are the Crazies); more recently Jutta Diturth, acentral gure in the party in the 1980s who was thrown o the ederal

committee by the parliamentary-roaders in 1989, has published a scath-ing ad hominemattack.6

Yet it would be too glib to assign exclusive blame to a chauvinisticclique among the Frankurt squatters, whose members proved to beeminently corruptible, or to suggest the leading Realos had alwaysintended to take the party so ar to the right. That would be to mistakea symptom or a cause. The rise o a certain personality type inside the

party apparatus is a widespread phenomenon with which the let hasbeen conronted or a long time. It would also mean overlooking thebroader co-option o social movementsrom second-wave eminismto environmentalismwithin which the Green deormation took place;the capacity o contemporary capitalism to absorb vital aspects o new

5 In 2009 Joschka Fischer was taken on as advisor to the Nabucco pipeline pro-ject, on a six-gure salary; he serves as senior strategic counsel to the (Madeleine)Albright Stonebridge group and is on the payroll obmw, Siemens, et al., as con-sultant and lobbyist; Andrea Fischer, ormer Green Minister o Health, is a lobbyistor the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries; ormer Green spokespersonGunda Rstel joined the management o Gelsenwasser/eon, which naturally hasa nuclear wing; Margareta Wol, Green principal secretary (Staatssekretrin) toJrgen Trittin at the Federal Ministry o the Environment, became a paid lobbyistor the nuclear industry; Matthias Berninger, Green principal secretary to RenateKnast at the Federal Ministry or Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture,now works or Mars, Inc.; Green anti-nuclear activist Marianne Tritz is now a lobby-ist or the tobacco industry; Green mep Cohn-Bendit works or a lobby nanced by

Amazon, Microsot, Google, Yahoo, Ebay and Facebook to infuence eu legislationin their avour; and so on.6 Christian Schmidt: Wir sind die Wahnsinnigen, Dsseldor 1998; Jutta Diturth,Krieg, Atom, Armut, Was sie reden, was sie tun: Die Grnen, Berlin 2011.


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jachnow:German Greens101Ecologists, eminists, students and counter-cultural networks joinedwith armers and housewives in mass protests that brought nuclear-plant construction sites to a halt in Wyhl (Baden-Wrttemberg),Grohnde (Lower Saxony) and Brokdor (Schleswig-Holstein). Critique

o the industrial policy embraced by all three establishment parties wasthe decisive starting-point or this heteroclite movement, which drewits impetus not only rom the civil unrest o 1968 and ater but alsorom more conservative layers, similarly alienated rom modern capital-ist society and its state, who deended allegedly traditional ways o lieagainst the big machine. It was a natural step or these groups to put upgreen alternative lists against the governing parties in local elections,but the majority were aversethrough a lively experiential culture,

rather than or any deeper theoretical reasonsto any orm o politi-cal centralization. An early attempt by conservative ecologists aroundormer cdu deputy Herbert Gruhl to unite the various regional greenlists and environmental groups into a single party was doomed to ail, asit was incompatible with the anti-authoritarian, decentralized nature othe local action groups.

They did, however, agree to put up an spvDie Grnen list in the rst

European Parliament elections in October 1979, headed by Petra Kelly,a 32-year-old environmentalist working or the European Commissionin Brussels. The list won 3.2 per cent o the vote and a handsome reim-bursement or the Greens campaign costs. This proved a turning point.Rudol Bahro, the East German eco-Marxist dissident, newly arrived inWest Germany ater a prison sentence in the gdr, issued an appeal ora new politics to meet the existential challenge o environmental catas-trophe, in which the needs o the species would trump those o class;

he called or an alliance that would stretch rom Herbert Gruhl to RudiDutschke. At two stormy conerences in 1980 a thousand delegates romthe local campaigns, as well as several hundred more rom let, eministand counter-cultural groups, agreed to constitute what Petra Kelly woulddescribe as an anti-party party. Gruhls conservatives and the vlkischblood-and-soil grouping led by Baldur Springmann ought ercely to barthe ar-let and Maoist organizations but were deeated by the majority,which rejected on principle any orm o censorship or political exclusion.

Highly conscious o the danger o parliamentarist co-option, the Greensset in place radical saeguards against it: members elected to state orFederal assemblies would step down halway through their terms, to bereplaced by the next Green on the election list; contrary to the German


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102nlr 81Constitutions strictures on the reedom o elected representatives to beaccountable to their consciences rather than their partys programme,Green deputies were to be mandated by party conerences. A strongeminist presence ensured rigorous gender equality: 50 per cent o party

positions would be occupied by women; mens and womens nameswould alternate on electoral lists (the zipper principle). A ederal com-mittee with a three-person leadership was directly elected by the annualconerence. Formal membership was not a condition o participation: allparty meetings and votes were open to the public.

Membership expanded dramatically, rom 16,000 in the spring o1980 to over 30,000 our years later. While more conservative Greens

remained strong in the southern Lnder, above all Baden-Wrttemberg,in the northern citiesHamburg, Bremen, Frankurt, West Berlintheradical let soon became hegemonic. Here, numerous heterodox letgroupings, along with the doctrinaire Maoists o the KommunistischerBund Westdeutschland (kbw) and the Frankurt Spontis associated withFischer and Cohn-Bendit, focked to join the party-building project.Indeed or much o the German let, the Greens became a kind o lastreuge. Since the Communists had lost their oothold in the Bundestag

in 1953, and then been (needlessly) outlawed by the ConstitutionalCourt, every attempt to launch a party to the let o the spd had ailed.State repression against let-wing dissidentsnotoriously renewed inthe early 70s by Willy Brandts Radikalenerla and the Berusverbotmade it even harder to construct a new ormation. On the other side othe Cold War border, a bureaucratic-dictatorial Realsozialismus causedurther divisions within the West German let, ranging rom doctri-naire endorsement to virulent disapproval. Nevertheless, the ar let

as such never predominated in the party, not least because importantcomponents o the Greens membership and core electorate espousedessentially liberal positions on socio-political questions or embraced amore conservative understanding o environmentalism. Nor were theletist newcomers able to draw up a common theoretical rameworkor the Greens.

In the long run, their triumph may have been a pyrrhic one. While the

gathering o so many currents under the Green umbrella seemed atrst to have unied West Germanys shattered let, it arguably contrib-uted urther to the splintering and co-option o those elements. Many


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jachnow:German Greens103ormer sectariansespecially rom the kbwunderwent rapid politicalconversions, emerging by the mid-80s as ree-market eco-libertarians.10There are obvious parallels here with the French nouveaux philosophes othe late 70s, or the much smaller number o ex-letist neo-conservatives

in the us. But though hardly a new phenomenon in history, the ormin which these collective renegacies occur has some bearing on theiroutcomes. The political-science literature generally ails to discuss thisconversion, preerring to repeat the myth o todays party establishmentwhich depicts the Greens as a successul outgrowth o the new socialmovements, which helped to modernize German society by breakingup its encrusted structures. Yet the Green Party was in good measurea response to the decline o the social movements: it bore the legacy o

deeat, and o the rustrated deviationstowards sectarianism, imme-diatism, the armed struggle culminating in the German Autumn o1977, or simply into apathywhich that ailure had precipitated. It rep-resented not the triumph o a generation over the established order, butrather the blockage o earlier emancipatory struggles.

The inherent contradictions o the Greens could also be seen as symp-tomatic o the postmodern intellectual and political culture in which

the party developed. This eclecticism did not merely refect the Greensorigins as a gathering placeSammelbecken, to quote its leadersodiverse political tendencies who wanted to secure entry to parliament.All attempts to orge a coherent theoretical outlook rom these cur-rents proved to be impossible due to their ideological antinomies;eco-libertarians embracing hedonistic individualism, or the radicalecologists instinct-driven orms o pastiche socialism, were in the endexpressions o the absence o a larger narrative. Its place was lled by

the perceived threat o an endangered nature and mankind, abstractenough to be as inclusive as possible; the priority was to clean up themess which modernity had created, without developing a new horizono emancipation. That minimalism, combined with maximum opennessto dierent world-outlooks, was the condition o the partys very exist-ence, as it was the only way to integrate the heterogeneous ragments oecologists, letists, pacists, conservationists, anthroposophists, organic

10

In its heyday the kbw had a ortune o millions, possessing real estate inFrankurts new banking skyline, dozens o brand new vehicles and an up-to-dateprinting press; some o this went to support the Greens. A number o its ormercadres made their way through other state and business institutions, as well as theGreen Party. Die Beerdigung war eher heiter, Die Tageszeitung, 18 February 1985.


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104nlr 81armers or Christians. Like Bahro, Petra Kelly would make a virtueo this incoherence:

The variety o currents enriches our party, even in the absence o a common

consensus in the analysis o society. I dont want to exclude communists orconservatives, and I dont have to. One current learns rom the other. Thereis no mutual destruction, but a convergence o views. Thats what is newabout our movement.11

A majority shared the ervent belie that something must be done aboutthe environmental crisis, but their proposed solutions were incompat-ible.12 Similarly, the spd governments commitment in the early 80s toinstall Pershing ii nuclear missiles on German soil, under natoi.e.,

uscommand, mobilized over a million people against the intensica-tion o the Cold War. Yet while the Greens were in agreement on theiropposition to nuclear weapons and to civil nuclear energy, there wasnever any broader consensus about the deeper underlying causes othese symptoms. The upshot was a strategy o addition, a process oaccommodation that at one stage resulted in a 500-page programme orthe North RhineWestphalia Greens.

Dialectic o partial success

In the 1983 Federal elections at the beginning o Helmut Kohls 16-yearreign as German Chancellor, the Greens scraped the 5 per cent hurdlewith two million votes, winning 27 seats in the now cdu-dominatedBundestag; they had already been entering Land and city-state assem-blies.13 Electoral successes brought new strains: the need to ll positionsand sta oces threatened to overwhelm the membership pool, which

by German standards was minute in comparison to the Greens

11 Werner Hlsberg, The German Greens: A Social and Political Profle, London 1988,p. 124.12 Some newcomers did not even share the concern about environmental issues. AsFischer put it: Lets be honest or once: which o us is interested in the water crisisin Vogelsberg, motorways in Frankurt or nuclear-power plants anywhere, becausethey eel personally concerned? See Diturth, Krieg, Atom, Armut, p. 69.13 In 1980, the Greens entered the Baden-Wrttemberg assembly with 5.3 per

cent; in 1981, Berlin with 7.2 per cent; in 1982, Hamburg with 7.7 per cent, LowerSaxony with 6.5 per cent and Hesse with 8 per cent; in 1983, Bremen with 5.4 percent. In 1984 they began to make strong gains in conservative university townsHeidelberg, Freiburg, Tbingencoming second to the cdu with 1420 per cent.


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jachnow:German Greens105electorate.14 Despite the principles o hal-term rotationrespected bynearly all the Greens, with the exception o Kellyand party mandates,a parliamentarist Bundestagsraktion, with a ull-time sta ten timesthe size o the party headquarters, now began to crystallize against the

more radical ederal committee, while dierences also opened up overcoalition or tolerance tactics towards the spd in the Land and cityassemblies. These divisions overlapped withindeed, oten constitutedthe grounds orthe ormation o our inner-party groupings that wererequently separated rom each other only by tactical nuances, above allregarding the spd.

The largest yet most ill-dened o these tendencies was that o the

radical ecologists, dubbed undamentalists or Fundis by their partyantagonists, and so by the latters media allies. Radical ecologists largelydominated the ederal committee up till 1988, with Jutta Diturth theirbest-known leader. They clung to the idea o a new environmental politicsas a means to total systemic change, bringing an end to industrial-military society and its state. In this perspective, the Bundestag wasmerely an arena that would permit social-movement activists to reacha wider audience, with a hazy idea o creating a general crisis in the

political system; they were thereore opposed on principle to enteringcoalition governments with the spd. Under their leadership, early Greencongresses laid down unmeetable conditions or coalition negotiations:the immediate shut-down o all nuclear plants, no nato nuclear mis-siles on German soil, etc.

The eco-socialists, mainly concentrated in the northern cities, were asmaller orce, but their intellectual contribution was more substantial.

Theoretical debates in the eco-socialist journal Moderne Zeiten, editedrom Hanover, analysed the ecological disaster as an outcome o thedestructive orces, both civil and military, o the capitalist mode o

14 In the 1980s the Greens had 30,00040,000 members to 2m3m voters, whereasthe spd had 1m members to 14m15m voters. The ratios in 1983 were 87 Green vot-ers or every party member; by comparison, those or the spd and the ChristianDemocrats were 16:1 and 20:1 respectively: Hlsberg, The German Greens, p. 108. A1989 survey o the 5,000 Greens in Hesse revealed that 4,000 were unctionaries

or mandate holders. Pressures on women were particularly acute, given the 50 percent quota, since women comprised only 3035 per cent o the membership. SeeMargrit Mayer and John Ely, eds, The German Greens: Paradox Between Movementand Party, Philadelphia 1998, p. 10.


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106nlr 81production.15 In their 1984 The Future o the Greens, Thomas Ebermannand Rainer Trampert envisaged an alliance o working-class and socialmovements, arguing that processes o production could not be trans-ormed without the agency o the workers. Though hostile to the state

apparatus and to any thorough-going reormist project, they wereprepared to see parliamentary politics as a way o advancing certain leg-islative projects and obstructing others; hence the idea o tolerating aminority spd governmentsupporting or opposing, issue by issuewas widely discussed in these circles.

By contrast the reormists, such as Fischer, Cohn-Bendit and HubertKleinertstyled as realists or, cooler, Realos by an approving media

saw the Greens as a minority coalition partner o the spd and wereprepared to make drastic compromises in order to get into governmentand implement small changes or the better. Not or nothing were theydubbed Koalos by their radical-ecologist opponents, who saw them astrying to social-democratize the Greens. Their base lay in Hesse and theRealo south, Bavaria and Baden-Wrttemberg. In their contributionsto the internal debate, Realos argued that the 1982 change o Federalgovernment, with the switch o the fdp kingmakers rom spd to cdu,

opened up the possibility o a RedGreen coalition as a new hope;criticizing the radical-ecologist majoritys position o undamental oppo-sition to the system, they called or a politics o ecological reorm.16 AsKleinert explained to Stern magazine in 1988, this entailed a mixture oregulative policies mediated by the state as well as an ecological econ-omy with market elements. Fischer was clearer still in his 1989 book,Der Umbau der Industriegesellschat: ecological reorm o the industrialsystem will be determined by the existing economic mode o Western

capitalism; market orces were a better means to reshape the economyand the environment than political intervention.17 In this, Fischers

15 See also Frieder Otto Wol, Eco-Socialist Transition on the Threshold o the 21stCentury, nlr 1/158, JulyAugust 1985.16 Wolgang Ehmke, Joschka Fischer, Jo Mller et al, Verantwortung und Augabeder Grnen, Grner basis-dienst, no. 1, 1985, p. 15, cited in Roland Roth and DetleMurphy, From Competing Factions to the Rise o the Realos, in Mayer and Ely,German Greens, p. 58.17

Stern, 4 April 1988, and Joschka Fischer, Der Umbau der Industriegesellschat:Pldoyer wider die herrschende Umweltlge, Frankurt-am-Main 1989, pp. 5961.Fischer had hijacked the title o the Greens 1986 programme which had had astrong working-class orientation, calling or the banks and means o production tobe socialized.


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jachnow:German Greens107views had come into alignment with those o the ourth tendency, theeco-libertarians. Initially a small minority o well-connected individuals,these ree-market Greens would come to exercise an increasing infu-ence in the party through their alliance with the Realos.

Watershed

Dierences over coalition policy were temporarily patched over by a 1984conerence agreement that these should be decided at local level. But theyerupted again in 1985 when the Hesse Greens entered a Land govern-ment with the spd, despite the latters notoriously cosy relations withdirty nuclear-power and pharmaceutical companies. With Fischer pre-

siding as the rst Green state minister or the environment, the partyproceeded to break virtually every pledge it had ever made, includingallowing nuclear plants to continue at ull blast ater the explosion atChernobyl, fatly against the Greens ocial position, until Fischer wasnally sacked by the spds Holger Brner. This debacle led to uriousdenunciations at the Greens conerence, and Fischers chie critic, JuttaDiturth, was re-elected to the ederal committee with a two-thirds major-ity. In the Federal elections o 1987 the Greens won 8.3 per cent, with 3

million votes. They now ormed a block o 42 mps in the Bundestag, withenlarged entitlements to ull-time oce sta and research unds.

But the gathering weight o the parliamentarians was now turn-ing against the radicals, helped by the structural majorities in avouro reormism and coalition-building among the community-basedBrgerinitiativen and the Greens electoral base. They received externalsustenance rom the political establishment and its media allies, worried

by the prospect o instability and anti-nato politics in the Bundestag,at a moment when Gorbachev was pushing or a new European settle-ment. Internally, erce arguments over a Mothers Maniesto, whichsavaged Green eminists or inadvertently privileging women withoutchildren, served to conuse and demoralize the radical ecologists andthe let. A new actionGrner Aubruch, led by Bundestag memberAntje Vollmer and ex-kbw Bremen parliamentarian, Ral Fckswhichclaimed to want to put an end to the ceaseless internal quarrels between

Realos and Fundis, rallied the 1988 Karlsruhe conerence to purgeDiturth and the radical ecologists rom the ederal committee, andinstall the Realos and themselves in power. The conerence also saw theemergence o the Linkes Forum, ormed by Ludger Volmer and others:


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108nlr 81another realist action which saw itsel as undogmatic and pushed orparticipation in government. A bitter ght-back ensued, but the radicalsand eco-socialists had been decisively sidelined.

The Greens were still reeling rom the internal blood-letting that ollowedthese conficts when the Berlin Wall came down in the autumn o 1989.The extent to which the party and its electorate had made themselves athome in the political culture o West Germany became apparent with theimplosion oRealsozialismus in the East. The Greens reacted in bewilder-ment to the prospect o unication, chasing ater developments shapedby others. The party was divided between indierence and paralysis. Theweakened let expressed its deep concerns about the likely consequences

o economic annexation or the people o the gdr, and the expansionistthrust o a new Grodeutschland, and thus opposed the push or unica-tion. Though the Western Greens were virtually the only frg politicalormation to have had some direct contact with a segment o the EastGerman opposition, the Realos dominance o the Bundestagsraktionmade it impossible to use this to articulate alternatives rom both sideso the allen wall. The Eastern Grne Partei had grown out o the envi-ronmentalist dissident movement in the gdr; it had positioned itsel

as an internal opposition to the sed regimes emulation o Westernindustrial growth and had always ought or the idea o collectivenotjust individualcivil rights. It thus diered quite prooundly rom thethree liberal civil-rights groups which came together in early 1990, withWestern backing, to orm the electoral alliance o Bndnis 90.18 TheRealo leadership now wielded its power to provide unilateral support,money and equipment or Bndnis 90 in the March 1990 Volkskammerelections, while abandoning the Eastern Greens. It was in this context o

social and political rollback, with the colonization by the West o the lie-worlds and economy o the East amid rising racist violence, and with theurther marginalization o any alternative politics in both East and West,that many o the eco-socialistsEbermann, Trampert and othersnally let the party in the spring o 1990, denouncing its conversioninto a pillar o the establishment.

18 Unortunately, little has been published about Green dissidents in the gdr. Anearly account that remains valuable can be ound in Carlo Jordan and Hans MichaelKloth, Arche Nova, Berlin 1995. Friedrich Heilmann oered a short retrospective onthe reunication debate in Green Environmental Politics: Basic Values and RecentStrategies, in Ingolur Blhdorn, ed., The Green Agenda: Environmental Politics andPolicy in Germany, Keele 1995, pp. 14366.


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jachnow:German Greens109Counteractuals

Could things have turned out otherwise? The environmental crises othe 70s and 80s arguably oered a broader opportunity or a renewed

critique o industrial capitalism that would oreground ecological disas-ter as a necessary consequence o the destructive orcesboth civil andmilitaryo that mode o production. Valiant attempts by eco-socialiststo arrive at a deeper understanding o the lethal threat it poses to thelimited resources o the natural world have remained embryonic. Yet anascent environmentalism oered the chance to reconstitute the workingclass as a political subject, both practically and theoreticallya genuinecollectivity o labour. Far rom being post-material concerns, ear o

pollution, radioactivity and other lie-threatening hazards o industrialsociety brought together workers in the chemical industry with salariedmiddle-class people. To be sure, the greater part o the working classcontinued to avour industrial expansion, viewing this as the conditiono its own prosperity. But the crisis o Fordism made a growing numbero workersusually those who were more highly skilledsusceptibleto environmental demands. Nevertheless, the let currents within theGreens ailed to develop a consistent long-term strategy aimed at integrat-

ing the wage-earning class into a renewed conception o eco-socialism.

The radical ecologists, even i they made use o socialist phraseology,showed little interest in any deeper theorizationindeed, oten dis-played a stark aversion to it. Their priority was the gut-instinct activismo the social movements, which they struggled to sustain even as theybegan to all into decline. Their eorts were not without success: theyused the Bundestag to raise public awareness o the worst orms o

industrial pollution, strengthened the alliance against the building oresh nuclear plants and unmasked the ugly ace o the political estab-lishments industrial lobbying. But without deeper alliances that wentbeyond the milieu o the Green politicians, their strategy was doomedto ailure in the long run. Successul partnerships with organized labourwere sometimes ormed locally, but they were never developed by theederal leadership as part o a coherent plan.

Nor did the mechanisms that were intended to stop a party oligarchyrom emerging prove ultimately eective. Despite their strong awarenesso the dangers o hierarchicalization and their stress on participatorydemocracy, the Greens depended on media celebrities rom the start.


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110nlr 81The Realos knew best how to play that card, as they not only had net-works o sympathetic journalists but could oer themselves to the mediaas dynamic gures, best placed to domesticate the party as a whole. Earlyprinciples o rotation and party mandates, borrowed rom the Paris

Commune and Spanish anarcho-syndicalism, proved ineective againstthis layer o power-seeking personalities. From an early stage, the partyshowed symptoms o a double lie: while majorities still voted or a radi-cal agenda at Green assemblies, the parliamentary ractiondominatedby reormiststacitly ignored them, until the party nally gave way.Underlying this shit were the regressive trends o the 1980s: the gath-ering orces o neoliberal reaction in the West, the stagnation o welarecapitalism, the renewed Cold War, the slow implosion o the Comecon

bloc. A large part o the Green electorate not only came o age during thisperiod but managed to shore up a place or itsel in the upper realms ostate employment, the media, service industries or the expanding alter-native or bio business sector; and thus helped to shape the party as alobby or this rather complacent middle-class layer.

The war party

In the rst Federal elections o the reunited Germany in December 1990,however, the triumphant Realos saw the cup o victory dashed romtheir lips. In the Western Lnder the Green Party won only 4.8 per cent,below the minimum threshold; its 44 seats and Federal resources werewiped out and its grandees excluded rom the Bundestag. It was only theEast German Greens, now in a orced marriage with Bndnis 90, whopassed the 5 per cent hurdle with 6.1 per cent. Fischers response wasto blame the electoral humiliation on residual radical elements. At the

Greens 1991 conerence in Neumnster, the Realos set about cleans-ing the party: principles o participatory democracy were abolished,individual leadership roles and proessionalization embraced. TheLinkes Forums Ludger Volmer was elected party spokesperson and alist o exceedingly modest reorms was drawn up as the basis or utureRedGreen coalitions. This conerence saw the departure o the radi-cal ecologists around Diturth rom what they saw as an authoritarian,dogmatic and hierarchical party. In 1993 Fischer delivered an ideologi-

cal blueprint or the let ater socialism that was as eclectic as it wasintellectually barren.19 The subject o Green liberal-reormismthe

19 Joschka Fischer, Die Linke nach dem Sozialismus, Hamburg 1993.


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jachnow:German Greens111urban liberal consumer-citoyen, dened by individual liestyle whileprotesting against nuclear power and empathizing with the poor andmarginalizedhad now come into his own.20

With enthusiastic backing or the new reormed Greens rom themedia, the party recovered its oothold in the Bundestag in 1994, with7.3 per cent o the vote and 49 seats. The remaining let wing o theparty, now represented by the Linkes Forum and their co-thinkers in theBabelsberg circle, had become trapped in the dynamics o Realpolitik,with ever-weaker reorm proposals as their basis or government par-ticipation, despite urther lowering experiences in the LnderLowerSaxony, Hesse, North RhineWestphalia, Berlin. I the Linkes Forum

Babelsberg grouping stemmed the partys neoliberalization or a while,it was at the price o perpetual compromise with the Realos, whose nalvictory was only deerred until the moment o the 1998 RedGreen ed-eral coalition. In the end oreign policy was the crucial test, with thedismemberment o Yugoslavia oering a proving ground or the unilat-eral military interventionism o the New World Order. As noted above,Cohn-Bendit and Fischer had been preparing the ground or Germanysremilitarization, though even they still considered a g-lea mandate

rom the un essential or any Lutwae operation. The big swing to thespd in 1998 brought the Greens into oce as coalition partners, thoughtheir own share o the vote had allen to 6.7 per cent. Few expected,though, that the new government would be banging the drum or thewar onatos expansion in Yugoslavia, or that leading Greens wouldsoon be outfanking the Pentagon in their calls or a land invasion.

The Linkes Forum now staged its own capitulation. Ludger Volmer, by

this stage state secretary to Fischer, was the most prominent deector,breaking ormer pledges to rally to the need or war. He and otherswould become spearheads o the new outlook.Deprived o powerul allieson the ederal committee who would challenge the Realosdirectly, andwith the media almost unanimously promoting the SchrderFischerline, the remaining dissidents were easily outvoted. A ew idealists haveheld out to the present day inside the party, mainly grouped aroundthe Grne Emanzipatorische Linke network, but their continued pres-

ence has done more to provide the leadership with a certain let cover

20 See the Realo maniesto by Joschka Fischer, Hubert Kleinert, Udo Knapp and JoMller, Sein oder Nicht-sein: Entwur r ein Maniest grner Realpolitik, 1988.


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112nlr 81than to advance their own projects. Others have returned to the socialmovements, got involved in new political networks such as attac, orjoined the pds and, ater 2007, Die Linke.21

The importance o Fischers role in bringing not just the Greens, but amuch larger dissident layer o post-68 German society into line withAllied requirements should not be underestimated; the ormer sel-styled anti-imperialist was well placed to assure a doubtul public thatthe Lutwae was serving no other purpose in the Balkans than prevent-ing an alleged genocidethus helping to make a reunied Germanyt or the wars o the new century. Even the usually staid FrankurterAllgemeine would claim that without Fischer and his biography, this

war might have led to a domestic emergency, a civil-war-style emer-gency. I we had lost public support in Germany, we would have lost itthroughout the alliance, noted nato spokesman Jamie Shea, describingFischer as an example o a political leader who did not just run behindpublic opinion, but knew how to shape it.22 Veterans o 1968 and therhetorical invocation o Nazism were required to sanctiy Germanysbombing o Belgrade.

Once blooded, the Greens proved some o the most enthusiastic warmon-gers in the Bundestag. While the Green Party usa resolutely opposedthe Bush Administrations decision to launch the war on Aghanistanin 2001, Fischer pulled out all the stops to ensure Schrder would haveGreen support or dispatching German troops. As the American Greenswrote in an open letter:

Most Greens worldwide recognize that this is a war or oil and politi-cal domination and will do nothing to protect us citizens or any peoplerom terrorism. Joschka Fischer and the Greens who are propping up theGerman government have put power beore principle. Their claim that

21 This is no guarantee, o course, that Die Linke will not in time emulate theGreens. According to a leaked cable, party leader Gregor Gysi gave private assur-ances to the us ambassador about Die Linkes policy towards nato: his demandor a new security pact that would embrace Russia was a mere tactical manoeu-vre designed to assuage the partys radical wing, as it might otherwise insist thatGermany leave nato unilaterally.22 See Frank Schirrmacher, Der lange Weg zu sich selbst: Wor Joschka Fischerhatet, Frankurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 1 October 2001; Jamie Shea: interviewor the Westdeutscher Rundunk tv documentary, Es begann mit einer Lge,February 2001.


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jachnow:German Greens113they must participate in the war eort in order to make it more humaneis obscene. They seem to be saying that by keeping themselves part o thegovernment they can make humanitarian cluster bombs or cancer-reedepleted uranium casings. This is nonsense.23

The response rom Fischer and Schrder was a grotesque attemptto portray opposition to the war as analogous to Nazi-era Germanunilateralismthat is, to military aggression. In a joint letter toBundestag deputies, they claimed:

The alternative to participating would be a German unilateralism thatruns counter to the decisive lesson rom our past: multilateral ties,

not renationalization. A new German unilateralismwhatever itsjusticationwould cause misunderstanding and mistrust among ourpartners and neighbours.24

In 2002, electoral expediency proved more telling than such lessonsrom history, and Schrder opted against supporting the invasion oIraq. But this stance, successul as it was in keeping the spdGreencoalition in oce, owed nothing to Fischers infuence. As he himselhas since explained, Schrder was entirely responsible or the govern-

ments line. Now the most reliably Atlanticist o Germanys parties, theGreens sanctioned the dispatch o our troopsto quote the Greendeence spokesperson Angelika Beer, a ormer Maoist and co-oundero the partyto the ever-expanding war on terror and o the GermanNavy to patrol the East Arican coast. According to a 2011 opinionpoll, no segment o the German population supports military engage-ment more enthusiastically than the Green electorate.25 When theMerkelWesterwelle government decided not to join the Anglo-Franco-

American war on Libya, its harshest critics were to be ound in theGreen Party: while nato aircrat dropped depleted uranium shells onTripoli, the ormer peace party was decrying the irresponsible attitudeo those who had kept the Lutwaegrounded. Apparently sensing thatthe Auschwitz analogy was starting to suer rom over-use, Green mpTom Koenigs instead argued that Germany should join the bombard-ment in order to make up or the act that it had sold so many weapons

23

Open Letter to the German Greens, 7 November 2001, cited in Jim Green,German Greens O to War Again, Synthesis/Regeneration 27, Winter 2002.24 Cited in Green, German Greens O to War Again.25Leipziger Volkszeitung, 22 April 2011.


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114nlr 81to Gaddas criminal dictatorshipSchrder and Fischer having litedthe arms embargo.

Eco-marketeers

The Green Party as a whole had never really grappled with the con-tradiction between environmental sustainability and the economicexpansionism that is inherent to capitalist accumulation; nor did themajority develop a consistent critique o what was at rst a small groupo eco-libertarians in their midst, who preached the gospel o eco-eciency; in avour o ree markets and opposed to state intervention,this was initially directed against the big machine o industrialism and

statism alike.26 Pro-market policies began to be oregrounded once theRealos had taken rm control o the party in the late 80s; with rising s-cal decits now ruling out the marginal Keynesian spending necessaryor green social-democratic policies, neoliberal thinking became increas-ingly predominant, as the only possible solution to the deepening crisiso Modell Deutschland. But the eco-libertarians also underwent a trans-ormation: talk o a decentralized economy and o civic individualismreed rom excessive bureaucracy has given way to enthusiasm or the

technocracy o globalized corporations and state apparatuses, lightingthe way towards an allegedly green capitalism in ull concordance withthe diktats o the imf and World Bank, relying on market mechanismsand technological solutions.

With the SchrderFischer government, the Greens emerged as themost dynamic proponents o Germanys neoliberal shock-therapy pro-gramme, Agenda 2010, once Laontaines short-lived attempt to revive

Rhenish social Keynesianism had been deeated. Wages and unemploy-ment benet were screwed down, corporate taxes slashed; uelled by theinternational credit expansion, Germanys post-2005 export boom tooko amid rising levels o inequality and social deprivation. Protests againstAgenda 2010 split the spd, with the dissenters later helping to ound Die

26 I borrow the term gospel o eco-eciency, which sums up perectly the chi-mera o an eco-riendly capitalism, rom the ground-breaking study by JuanMartnez Alier, The Environmentalism o the Poor: A Study o Ecological Conicts andValuation,Cheltenham 2002. This delusional, market-riendly brand o environ-mentalism is especially popular in Baden-Wrttemberg: heartland o the Germancar industry and eco-libertarianism alike, and the rst Landto spawn a Green-ledgovernment in 2011.


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jachnow:German Greens115Linke, and the RedGreen coalition was evicted in the 2005 election. Butthe new-model Green Party membership showed no qualms. Havinginternalized the idea that all other systems are worse than capitalism,the Greens now nd the idea o zerolet alone negativegrowth

unthinkable. They have become strident lobbyists on behal o corpora-tions hoping to prot rom the transition to green energy sources, asor those selling ecological commodities. The party now derives mucho its political capital as a modernizing orce rom this sector, supplyingthe kind o pseudo-environmentalism which itsel promises to become alucrative commodity in the ace o global disaster, preparing resh eldsor capital accumulation.27 From e-cars to Desertec, they are actively pro-moting so-called green technologies which have already proved to be

neither peaceul nor ecological in their repercussions.28

Although Fischer dismissed the idea o the Greens entering a cdu-ledFederal coalition ater the 2005 election, such alliances were soon beingreached at state level (indeed they had been promoted by eco-libertarianslike Thomas Schmid since the early 80s). In 2008 the rise o Die Linkeoered the possibility o a RedRedGreen coalition in Hamburg; theGreens scuttled it by entering a coalition with the cdu. In Saarland the

ollowing year, a strong swing to Die Linke again let the Greens as king-makers; they vetoed a let coalition with the spd and Laontaines DieLinke and entered oce with the cdu and fdp. In staunchly conservativeBaden-Wrttemberg, a series o mass protests against ar-reaching planspushed by the ruling cdu to rebuild Stuttgarts station at massive costled to the election in 2011 o the Greens rst Land Minister-President,Winried Kretschmann. A ormer kbw veteran, Kretschmann could nothave been more cocky and conceited about presenting himsel to the

electorate as a provincial Catholic o good petty-bourgeois stock. Oncein oce, he began to backtrack on cancelling the new station, declaringthat a urther reerendum would have to be held. The Greens are cur-rently presiding over its construction.

27 Green representatives are now very welcome to expound their views beore share-holders o old ossil-uel giants such as rwe or eon, where they can warn themthat it is not only the planet but your shareholder value which is at riskas mepSven Giegold did recently.28 Ozzie Zehner has written a compelling critique o the use o eco-riendly techno-logy to green-wash an unsustainable economic model o ceaseless growth withcatastrophic implications or nature and mankind: Zehner, Green Illusions: TheDirty Secrets o Clean Energy and the Future o Environmentalism, Lincoln, ne 2012.


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116nlr 81The Greens have paid strikingly little in electoral terms or their politicalmutation. The Green electorate has not expanded much over the yearsinching up rom 8.3 per cent in 1987 to 10.7 per cent in 2009but ithas got older, richer and more conservative, in tandem with the partys

leaders. Green support has grown among college-educated and proes-sional voters, while it has done ever-worse in terms o working-class and(especially) trade-union votes. In 1987, 60 per cent o Green voters wereunder 35; in 2009, 60 per cent were over 40. Nevertheless, the partyhas a signicant new ollowing among better-o millennials, especiallyyoung women: in 2009, its vote share among 1825 year-olds was 15.4per cent, rising to almost 19 per cent o emale voters in that cohort.29In April 2013, one poll suggested that 54 per cent o Green voters would

back a Federal coalition with the cdu this September, while 64 percent ocdu voters would be happy with a BlackGreen government inBerlin.30 Cohn-Bendit told Bild (25 April 2013) that a cduGreen alli-ance would be a realistic option, on condition that the Greens got theFinance and Energy ministries. Nevertheless, at the Greens April 2013party conerence in Berlin, Jrgen Trittin, Renate Knast and ClaudiaRoth led a pro-spd rebellion, voting or a rise in the top tax rate as partypolicy, to the chagrin o Kretschmann and the Green Mayor o Tbingen,

Boris Palmer.31

Whether that position will survive the September 2013 election resultsremains to be seen. The Greens may still play king (or queen)-maker in

29 See Lutz Mez, Who Votes Green?, in Mayer and Ely, German Greens, p. 82;Bernard Wessels, Jan Engels and Gero Maas, Demographic Change and ProgressivePolitical Strategy in Germany, Centre or American Progress, Washington, dc2011; Federal Returning Ocer, Wahl zum 17 Deutschen Bundestag am 27 September2009, ch. 4, Wahlbeteiligung und Stimmabgabe der Mnner und Frauen nachAltersgruppen, Wiesbaden 2010.30 Forsa poll, cited in Derek Scally, Greens contemplate a post-election uture withMerkel, Irish Times, 26 April 2013.31 Trittins experience as Environment Minister in the RedGreen ederal coali-tion should have been instructive: In key areas, Trittin was orced to implementSchrders directives but carry the political responsibility. For example, in June1999, Schrder ordered Trittin to veto the passage o a new eu directive on therecycling o old cars, apparently directly ollowing interventions by the German

car industry to the Chancellor. Rdig, Germany, in Ferdinand Mller-Rommeland Thomas Poguntke, eds, Green Parties in National Governments, London 2002,p. 98. Trittins journey rom Babelsberg to Bilderberghe attended the groups2012 conerence in Chantilly, Virginiais almost as impressive as the path ol-lowed by Joschka Fischer.


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jachnow:German Greens117Berlin. There was a time when that prospect might have caused anxietyin Washington, but the Greens are the American Embassys avouriteGerman party nowadays. And why not? The Green Party has reducedthe struggle or universal emancipation to the small change o organic

and air trade consumerism. The harmless memory o a dissidentpast now serves as an inexhaustible source o legitimacy, not just ortheir own actions, but or German power and the state apparatus itsel.Reality is turned upside down: it is not the Greens who have changed,apparently, but the worldmaking yesterdays opposition to war themoral source or humanitarian intervention today. nato now guresas the key instrument or disarmament in the partys policy papers,while the Lisbon Treaty, the eus de acto charter or a technocratic oli-

garchy, becomes a major step towards democracy and transparency, andeconomic domination over Greece is exerted in the name o Europeansolidarity. Let the conservatives wage war under the banner o nationalinterests; the Greens will dispatch the army in the name o a just andrighteous world government o the enlightened. This is not to implythat the Greens deliberately do the opposite o what they pretend; on thecontraryand much more chillingthey may mean it.

what’s become of the german greens

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