Five months before the national election, a green party that once presented itself as the rebel of German politics finds itself in an extraordinarily respectful position.
The party’s position in the ballot box – in second place with 21-23% of the vote – means that it will nominate a candidate for chancellor on Monday for the first time in its 41-year history. Furthermore, by the end of the year, the candidate will have a realistic chance of occupying the top post in German politics.
A party once infamous for hard-fought conferences and ideological strife, it is also entering the hot phase of the election race with uncharacteristic unity and calmly watching from the sidelines while its closest rival, the conservative CDU / CSU bloc, is embracing itself. to tear apart over his own choice of candidate.
The Greens’ co-leaders, Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock, one of whom will be revealed as the party’s chancellor candidate, embody a broader cultural change within the party that first entered the Bundestag in 1983.
“The modern Greens are comfortable with the idea of political power, and they know they have to get to the political center to get it,” said Wolfgang Merkel, a political scientist at Humboldt University in Berlin.
“They are very professionally organized and behave with a sense of responsibility that one can expect from a party that is already in power,” Merkel said. “The Greens seemed to be looking for a program forever. Now it’s a party that, above all, seems to want an office. ‘
Unlike when the Ecological Party formed a government with the Social Democrats of Gerhard Schröder from 1998 to 2005, the biographies of its front row are no longer imbued with the counterculture politics of the 1968 student movement.
Baerbock, 40, has a background in international law and has put the party’s climate and foreign policy behind the scenes for years. Habeck, 51, was previously a translator of poetry, a novelist and philosopher before serving as deputy prime minister of Schleswig-Holstein between 2012 and 2017.
Their party is more academic, more culturally proficient and more comfortable of the middle class than any of its previous iterations – a party for the winners of globalization, some critics say. It is predominantly white, though less than most other German parties: 15% of its deputies have a migrant background, the second highest percentage after the left The Left.
The shift of the Greens to the political center began during his last reign, when it did little to mobilize against Schröder’s labor market reforms and enable German troops in Kosovo.
But the tectonic shift did cause great friction between the party’s pragmatic Realo and left Fundi factions, which culminated in the paint bombing of then-Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer at a special party congress in 1999 over his support for military involvement.
Under the leadership of Baerbock and Habeck, the Fundis became silent to the point of inaudibility. The couple worked hard to promote his image as a Prohibition Party, a party that wants to improve the world by decree.
On the campaign route for the Bavarian state election in 2018, Habeck developed a stage routine that began to lament the absurd absurdity of every household owning its own electric drill, a tool that probably uses no more than a few minutes in its lifetime. will not be. Habeck’s advantage: he himself bought an electric drill for each of his four sons as a birthday present.
The message was clear: here was a party that no longer pretends to be intrinsically virtuous than its constituents. In Baerbock’s words, the new greens are trying to be “radical and stately” at the same time.
While the rise of Fridays for the Future has helped push the green topic to the top of the political agenda, the party has worked hard over the past decade to expand its expertise, with talent like former Pirate Party politician Marina Weisband.
Green party experts appear on political talk shows about digital rights, pandemic management, financial reform and security policy.
“The Greens were never a party that cared exclusively for the environment,” said Ulrich Schulte, a journalist for the Taz newspaper and author of The green power (“The Green Power”), a book about the new greens. “In the founding years, they also diminished opinions on disarmament, alternative economics and women’s rights. But now the Greens’ manifesto is a complete supermarket. ”
This extensive appeal is also reflected in the ages of the voters. When the party first entered the German parliament, most of the votes came from those aged 18 to 24.
Since 2004, however, its strongest support in nationwide elections has come from the 49-59 segment, while the party has not lost contact with younger voters: during the European elections in 2019, The Greens was the most popular party among all groups under the age of 45. And with some 68ers now running the category above the 70s, the party can hope for supporters from across the generation spectrum.
The youth can still trump when it comes to being a candidate for chancellor. Baerbock, who was born in Hanover in 1980, is considered to be one ahead of her co-leader over the past year.
The former tournament-level trampoline has won admiration for her tenacity, drive and thoroughness, not just among traditional green voters: the center-right editor of Die Welt recently said that any CDU candidate is the “female politician”.
‘Like her idol [Angela] Merkel, Baerbock is a daughter, tougher and also more reticent than most people accept, ”Ulf Poschardt wrote.
The choice of Habeck as the candidate of the Greens would indicate a different political direction rather than a different style. The Lübeck northerner is not only a prolific author, having chaired the party – and published two non-fiction titles over the past three years – but has developed a new way for politicians to appear in public. speaks: reflective, but not openly pretentious. , confident but also upfront about his own shortcomings.
European Green politician Daniel Cohn-Bendit endorsed Habeck in a recent editorial in Die Zeit, saying that a green candidate stands a chance of winning the election if he or she can convey a change of style. to adapt to the change in politics started by Joe Biden, a change that will make Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping look like yesterday’s men.
“Mutual agreements can have more power than these strongmen presume,” Cohn-Bendit said, a substantial endorsement of the former student leader who, like few others, represents the Greens’ crackling guy himself.