Germany’s Green Party is a very long way from that day in January 1980 when 1,000 young idealists gathered in the country’s southwestern city of Karlsruhe.
“It certainly was a colorful bunch of people. There were veterans of the 1968 students’ movement, environmental activists, anti-war protesters, conservatives, animal rights activists, equal rights activists and communists, to name just a few,” Deutsche Welle reported on the Greens’ 40th anniversary last year. “Many of the men had long beards and wore brightly colored overalls. Many women wore handmade knit sweaters. The Greens had been founded.”
Imagine the sense of achievement this past Sept. 26, when the Greens collected an all-time record 15 percent of the national vote and 118 seats in the Bundestag. This was by far their best result since first standing for election in 1980, when, according to Deutsche Welle, they were viewed “pretty much as oddballs and misbehaved children.” The description is apt, considering that the Greens’ first parliamentarian, Joschka Fischer, helped beat up a police officer during a street protest in 1973.
And imagine the feeling of pride on Dec. 8 when the Greens joined the Social Democrats and Free Democrats to form a new government to replace Chancellor Angela Merkel, who retired after 16 years of noted stability.
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