By Joseph Lobodzinski
The concept of powerful Green parties influencing governing coalitions and policy directives are none too commonplace than on the European continent. In Germany, where the topics of climate change and environmentalism dominate the political landscape just as much as the conventional issues of the economy and national security, the idea of a Green party has found increasing success over the past half-century. As a country whose language holds over one thousand nouns, verbs, and adjectives pertaining to the word “forest” (known as ‘Wald’ in German) and associates a sense of Heimat or “belonging” with the nature within their borders, it makes sense that Germany would have one of the most prominent Green parties in all of Europe, if not the entire world. Known officially as Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (often simply referred to as Die Grünen), the German Greens have undergone one of the most intriguing political evolutions for a modern European political party. As the popularity for environmentally-focused policies and politicians increase in the present day, and the continued success of political parties such as Bündnis 90/Die Grünen seem more probable, it is significant for us to know the history behind the party that may just run the world’s fourth largest economy sometime in the near future as a member of the governing coalition. Once created by a radical group of young leftist intellectuals forged in the student protests of 1968, the German Greens have integrated within the neoliberal machine while becoming one of Germany’s most powerful and interesting political parties.
The German culture and political landscape has a vibrant and rich history concerning environmentalism and ecocriticism, making it the perfect breeding ground for an environmentally focused political party to succeed. Prior to the formal creation of the German Green Party, “the legacy of the past [was] visible in the desire to construct a new ‘clean’ German national identity, evident in the adoption of progressive environmental policies in the late 1960s and early 1970s in both the GDR and the Federal Republic.” What instigated these reforms were the same reasons that inspired the establishment of the German Green Party itself, and those were the set of events and decisions that led up to the German Student Protests of 1968. In 1966, following the collapse of the CDU-CSU/FDP coalition within the West German Bundestag, a new government was formed between the two largest parties. A governing alliance was created between CDU-CSU/SPD, making the leader of the CDU Kurt Georg Kiesinger the new chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, with the leader of the SPD Willy Brandt as Vice chancellor. What ensued was the complete disillusionment towards the idea of democracy within the minds of many young West Germans. Disillusioned with the grand coalition between the CDU/CSU and the SPD which comprised approximately ninety-five percent of the seats in the Bundestag, many university students took to the streets in West Germany in protest. A significant number of these young men and women began forming the Außerparlamentarische Opposition, or the “extra-parliamentary opposition” which was commonly referred to as the APO. The APO would continue operating until 1969, when the grand coalition between the CDU-CSU and the SPD disbanded after the election of 1969 and a new government was formed between the SPD and the FDP with Willy Brandt becoming the new Chancellor of West Germany. However, the want for a new political party in the Bundestag continued to develop even after the end of the parliamentary crisis of late 1960s West Germany. Throughout the 1970s, a “Marsch durch die Institutionen” (march through the institutions) was started by many former leftist radicals and key members of the APO and the Student Protests of 1968. These individuals included Rudi Dutschke, Petra Kelly, and Joschka Fischer ⎯ all of whom called for the formation of a new political party in Germany. They began organizing for a party that would represent these movements and ideas within the German parliament as a governing party, and on January 13, 1980, the German Green Party (Die Grünen) was officially founded and recognized as a German national party.
As the German Greens formally assembled themselves for the first time in the first party congress of 1980, the “ideological tenets” of the party were also devised. On the exact same day in which the party was founded, its creators announced the famous “Four Pillars of the Green Party” which were social justice, ecological wisdom, grassroots democracy, and nonviolence respectively. The party quickly went to work establishing itself within German politics. After some successes in state-level elections in West Germany, the party found its way into the Bundestag in 1983 by winning 5.7% of the vote in the 1983 federal elections and gaining 27 seats. What contributed to their rather quick political assent was their stark criticism of U.S. and NATO militarism. In 1983, the deployment of nuclear-tipped cruise missiles on West German lands generated strong discontent among the general population, and the German’s Greens message of pacifism attracted a number of voters disillusioned with the main party apparatus both supporting the storage of weapons of mass destruction in their backyards. As the eighties continued to unfold, the Greens were able to grow their representation in the Bundestag due to capitalizing on the environmental hysteria instigated by the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 and the ever increasing ecological destruction contributed by air pollution and acid rain. After the 1987 federal elections, they saw an increase to 44 seats in the Bundestag. However, Die Grünen would quickly fall from grace during and immediately after reunification of East and West Germany into one full federal republic. In the 1990 federal elections, the first in post-reunified Germany, the German Greens were barely able to achieve the five percent threshold to obtain representation in the Bundestag despite combining with the Alliance 90 civil rights activist group from the former DDR. The new Bündnis 90/Die Grünen failed to capitalize on a new and more left-leaning electorate in the East due to the party’s failure to appeal to German nationalism and the economy during the reunification period, instead opting to continue to fight for less prevailing political issues such as global warming and German pacifism.
Throughout the 1990s, the German Greens were finally able to taste significant political and electoral victories, culminating their successes by joining the federal government for the first time to create the “Red-Green” coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) after the 1998 federal elections. Joschka Fischer, one of the original founders of Die Grünen during the first party congress of 1980, and who served as the party parliamentary faction co-chair in the Bundestag throughout the nineties, became the Vice Chancellor and the Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s new government. By partaking in the new governing coalition, the Greens had finally achieved the political success to legitimize their party and their platform after years of being locked out of governing coalitions and processes in the Bundestag and in multiple Landtags across the Federal Republic. However, almost immediately after the formation of the “Red-Green” government, the party itself was plunged into an internal crisis regarding the participation of the German military as a part of NATO actions in the Kosovo conflict. Being a party founded upon the staunch pacifism advocated for by the young protestors who took to the streets in the Student Protests of 1968, numerous members of the party resigned their party membership when the Green Party leadership sided with the SPD to deploy German troops in a military conflict for the first time since the second world war. Disappointment towards the party leadership would not end there, as the anti-nuclear power activists who made up a portion the party electorate became increasingly disillusioned as the party continued to settle for tactic compromises with pro-business SPD members towards shutting down the country’s nuclear power stations and the other environmentalist demands made by the party. The debate of Green pacifism continued into the twenty-first century as the 9/11 terrorist attacks prompted an invasion of Afghanistan by the United States, and despite a vote of confidence, the Red-Green were able to command a majority of their coalition to send troops to assist the U.S. in the conflict. Nevertheless, despite all the drama of what appeared to be four years of backtracking on the fundamental ideals of the party, the Bündnis 90/Die Grünen were able to increase their share of the vote in the 2002 federal election and retain their secondary position in the governing alliance with the SPD. For the next three years while the Greens remained as a governing party, they tried to make inroads with the traditionally left-wing demographics in Germany that had fled the party ranks. The party renounced the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and along with the SPD the German government refused to take part in any direct military action during the invasion and subsequent battles against Iraqi insurgents, much to the delight of the party’s pacifist wing. In April of 2005, the Greens were able to successfully push for the decommissioning of the Obrigheim nuclear power station, achieving some progress towards ending nuclear power in Germany.
After the 2005 federal election, the Greens fell out of the governing coalition after the CDU-CSU won the popular vote and formed a grand coalition with the SPD. Since then, the party has been unable to become a governing party in the Bundestag, either by joining a coalition or forming a coalition of their own by winning the popular vote. Despite this fall from power, the foundation and subsequent evolution of the German Green Party from becoming a rag-tag group of former young radical intellectual protestors to a fully functioning political party leading the country as part of a governing coalition in the Bundestag over the short span of eighteen years is nothing short of awe-inspiring. However, during their reign in power, the Bündnis 90/Die Grünen had forsaken much of the party’s founding ideals to tow the line of the bureaucratic establishment. The Green party leadership backtracked on their “ideological tenets” of nonviolence and ecological wisdom by condoning German military involvement in the Kosovo conflict and the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan while settling for moderate compromises with the SPD for environmental reforms, some of which would be later repealed by governing coalitions led by the CDU-CSU. Ultimately, while the German Greens initially stood for the populist ideas propagated by the Student Protests of 1968 and the APO, they eventually became more centrist and neoliberal over time, particularly when the party was forced to govern as one of the governing parties in the Bundestag. Now as the context shifts to the present day, the Bündnis 90/Die Grünen won 14.8 percent of the national vote in the recent 2021 German federal election on September 26th, 2021, making them the third largest party heading into 20th Bundestag. Along with the FDP, the Greens are the kingmakers for forming the next government coalition, and as of early November 2021, current talks have pointed to a governing coalition between the Greens, the FDP, and the SPD, with SPD candidate Olaf Scholz positioned to be the next Chancellor of Germany. The question remains whether or not the Greens will remain true to their values of environmental justice and human rights now that they are soon to find themselves in a position of governance on the federal level, or if they are to backtrack on their party promises and be forced to compromise as they did the last time they found themselves in power.
Works Cited
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Goodbody, Axel, ed. The Culture of German Environmentalism: Anxieties, Visions, Realities. Berghahn Books, 2002.
Frankland, E. Gene, and Schoonmaker, Donald. Between Protest and Power : The Green Party in Germany. Boulder: Westview Press, 1992.
Hülsberg, Werner. The German Greens : A Social and Political Profile. London ; New York: Verso, 1988.
Markovits, Andrei S., and Gorski, Philip S. The German Left : Red, Green and Beyond. Europe and the International Order. Oxford University Press, 1993.
Brunstetter, Scott H. Shades of Green: The Use of Force Debate in the German Green Party, 1990–2002. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2008.
Jachnow, Joachim. “What’s Become of the German Greens?” New Left Review, June 2013.
Bundeswahlleiter.de“Germany: Green Party agrees to start formal coalition talks”. Deutsche Welle, October 17, 2021.
