Renewing Democracy: The Rise of Green Politics in West Germany
in German Politics and SocietyThe September 2013 Bundestag election, which reelected Angela Merkel
as chancellor, was a clear defeat for the Green Party. Alliance 90/The
Greens (henceforth the Greens) fared far better than the Free Democratic
Party (FDP), which failed even to score the five percent of the vote required
for representation in parliament, but still fell from 10.7 percent to 8.4 percent,
losing five of their sixty-eight seats in parliament. Since in March of
that same year, surveys had shown their support at 17 percent, this disappointing
result forced Jürgen Trittin, the leader of the parliamentary delegation
to step down.1 In many ways, this perceived electoral debacle marked
the end of an era. The former Federal Minister of the Envi ron ment, who
had originally joined the party in 1980, told reporters that “a new generation” would have to step forward and lead the party into the 2017
campaign. This statement suggested not only that the Greens’ rebellious
founding impulse was spent, but also that they had become part of the
establishment in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), now requiring a
reinvigoration of their own. Since the Greens were once expected to be little
more than a short-lived byproduct of the social conflicts of the 1970s, a
closer look at the party’s founding moment at the beginning of the 1980s
might shed new light on its current predicament.