How the German Greens rose to power

Christian Science Monitor - When Germany's left-leaning Green party was born 30 years ago, former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt dismissed them outright. "They’re just environmental idiots who will have disappeared again soon," he said.

They didn't. In fact, in a turn of events reverberating across the nation, the Greens on Sunday ended six decades of conservative rule in one of Germany’s wealthiest states, completing their transformation from a radical protest party to a mainstream force shaking the traditional political order.

For the first time ever in Germany, and only the second time in European history, a Green will be prime minister of a major regional state. "It’s a new political era," says German Green party leader Claudia Roth.

Capitalizing on a mix of nuclear aversion and local furor over a highly unpopular railway project in Stüttgart, the Greens doubled their representation to 24.2 percent in Baden Württemberg, stealing power from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling Christian Democratic Union. The Greens were also the clear winners in the state of North Rhine Westphalia, where they tripled their share of the vote and weakened the Social Democratic grip.

... The German Green party was born in the late 1960s with young, rebellious students trying to shake the political establishment. In the 1970s, the Greens became a platform for antinuclear protests. In the 1980s, they embraced the antiwar movement.

... Many times the Greens' future looked grim. Each time they bounced back. At times in the 1990s, they lacked any representation in parliament. But over the years, they won mayoral battles in significant German cities and returned politicians to parliament.

Meanwhile, tensions arose between the party’s idealists and realists. Joschka Fischer grew to embody the party’s “Realos.” He was a sneaker-wearing demonstrator in the 1960s, even caught on video throwing stones. But as foreign minister in a coalition government with the Social Democrats from 1998 to 2005, Mr. Fischer brought Germany into the Afghanistan war and drafted welfare reform that cut unemployment benefits, leading some to accuse the Green party of betraying its core values of social justice and pacifism.

In 2000, the "Red-Green" coalition hammered a historic deal to put an "irreversible" end to nuclear power. It was a triumph for the Greens, but with the nuclear issue seemingly resolved, the party lost a key campaign platform.

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