The Green Factor In German Politics

From Protest Movement To Political Party

Gerd Langguth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000301991
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Green Party evolved out of a number of protest movements of the late 1960s and 1970s and became a major political factor in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1983 when it drew enough votes to send twenty-seven members to the Bundestag. The author follows the party's rise from new social and ecological groups to its current place in the Federal parliament and provincial legislatures. He addresses the questions raised by Green Party members and by the unrest they have engendered—whether they believe in parliamentary democracy, what effect their policy of replacing delegates in parliament at midsession will have on the parliament and the party, and how they relate to Germany's traditional political parties. The answers to these and other questions form the background for an appraisal of the Green party in which the author traces the development of its role from a political irritant to a factor of serious influence.

1
The Formation Of The Green Party

Early Ecological and Alternative Movements

It is not possible to understand the establishment of the Green Party as the parliamentary arm of a protest movement without at least a cursory examination of the history of protest movements in the Federal Republic of Germany. In the 1950’s, a broadly based movement sought to prevent the establishment of German armed forces. During that period, the ohne mich (without me) movement sought to opt out of difficult political decisions. In 1955, moreover, a movement opposed Germany’s new military alliances. These short-lived movements were followed in 1957 by a movement against nuclear warfare and in the early 1960’s by Easter March antinuclear movements with origins in Great Britain. None of these movements had major popular appeal. Less political, even though directed against accepted values and morals were the counterculture movements of the 1950’s and 1960’s (such as the beatniks, hippies, and yippies) that also failed to achieve any real importance.

Not until the second half of the 1960’s did a major protest movement develop in Western industrialized countries. It originated with students and was represented in the Federal Republic of Germany by the German Socialist Student Association (SDS).¹ Their protest against the so-called Establishment led to the development of a political ideology influenced primarily by German-born Stanford University professor, Herbert Marcuse. Using the psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud as a starting point, Marcuse sought to establish a “new human being” living in a “culture without suppression” and “without repressive mechanisms.” The protest movement was also inspired by Prof. Max Horkheimer who, as a result of the events of World War II, had developed the theory of the authoritarian state. The antiauthority revolt of the SDS influenced large segments of the student population, resulting not only in a revolt against “outdated” university structures but also against what they viewed as the narrow-minded moral and value system of the German middle class. The protest movement found its central theme in its protests against the U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. The reasons for this movement’s successful appeal among students were manifold; initially it found a surprised audience, unprepared for this type of protest movement. Such sociologists of the youth movement as Helmut Schelsky and Ludwig von Friedeburg were equally surprised; as late as the early 1960’s Friedeburg had noted that students in this modern society “had ceased to be the ferment of productive unrest.”²

The fertile soil for the youth movement’s message was based in part on the increasing anonymity of modern society, where the loneliness of the individual often leads to a desire to associate with others for the sake of group interaction, and in part on the loss of appeal of traditional values. In the Federal Republic of Germany, the existence of a coalition that governed from 1966 to 1969 without any major opposition served to radicalize Left-leaning students, who were suddenly bereft of their traditional leftist opposition role in parliament. Prof. Richard Löwenthal of the Free University of Berlin saw the real causes of the protest as follows: “The militant attitude of young German intellectuals and their radical criticism of modern industrial society are developing within a clearly discemable socio-cultural pessimism. Their demand for the renewal of a radical utopia is based on a basic attitude of despair, their longing for a belief frequently based on nihilism which sees the humanistic values of our civilization as mere hypocrisy.”³ Another author emphazised that the source of the student movement required a sociopsychological rather than an economic explanation.⁴

The West German protests against authority began with the first actions at the Free University of Berlin in 1965 and reached their apex during the Easter disturbances following the assassination attempt on Rudi Dutschke, a protest leader, on April 11, 1968, and the campaign against the state of emergency laws in the summer of that year. Thereafter, the SDS appeared increasingly resigned to circumstances, and the organization dissolved itself on March 20, 1970. The first half of the 1970’s was marked by the efforts of various political groupings to regain the influence among young people previously commanded by the SDS. The following political groups are worth noting:

• Dogmatic Marxist-Leninist groups, the so-called K-groups, Maoist-type Communist cadre groups that opposed each other vigorously. Some are still in existence, but they are now mostly without influence.
• Dogmatic Communist groups under the influence of the Soviet Union. These are primarily the German Communist Party (DKP) and its student and youth organizations: chiefly the Marxist Student Association (MSB), the Young Pioneers (JP), and the Socialist German Workers Youth (SDAJ).
• Terrorist groups. A few terrorist groups are based on the SDS tradition; many of their members come from the protest movement.⁵
• Antiauthority and anarchist groups and the Spontis. The effort to continue the antiauthority, anarchist, and largely voluntaristic traditions of the SDS never completely stopped. The Spontis (an anarchist group), in particular, were active in universities during the second half of the 1970’s.
• Subcultures. Some of the protesters moved to a nonpolitical level that favored a rejection of traditional society and embraced such ideologies as the drug culture and unconventional religious sects.
• Reformers. These former SDS members participated in the “long march through the institutions” predicted by Rudi Dutschke but then allowed themselves to become part of the political system they once rejected.

After the dissolution of the SDS, various groups competed against each other and obstructed each other’s public effectiveness and as a result were unable to achieve any broad-based success. Not until the second half of the 1970’s did the protest movement have a rebirth under the banner of environmental protection. This ecology-oriented movement attracted many political figures, among them Christian Democratic Union representative Herbert Gruhl, and many unknown adherents of the “Young Left.” Gruhl’s 1975 book Ein Planet wird geplündert⁶ (The Plundering of the Planet) became a bestseller. He found that the race between the various ecological systems had become a race to the abyss: “It is a war blind with rage against the earth and the natural environment—and thereby against the fundamentals of human life itself.” Gruhl drew the image of a balance of terror that led his followers to fear a catastrophe and doubt their belief in the inevitability of progress. These attitudes were engendered among all age groups—not only among young people. His criticism of modern civilization had been stated earlier in the 1972 Club of Rome publication The Limits of Growth. But it was primarily Gruhl’s statements that united Germans pessimistic about society, rightists as well as leftists, in their rejection of existing environmental policies. The numerous citizen initiatives on environmental issues during this period indicate the great importance suddenly attached to them.

Parallel to this demand for a change in environmental policies, other indications of a “second” culture stemmed from the protest movement, particularly in the universities. This movement for an alternate life-style turned against pressures for achievement and careerism and drew upon traditions established by some of the reform movements of the turn of the century.

Characteristic of the movement were demands for changes in personal life-styles, for a turn toward asceticism, for solidarity with neighbors, and for the careful use of energy and natural resources. The alternative culture was marked by such ventures as health stores, publishing houses for alternative literature, bars operated by and for members of the alternative culture and, of course, by rural and urban communes.⁷ In the larger cities the communes developed into counterculture communities whose members not only worked together but frequently also lived together. Their homes, equipped with self-contained communications networks and governed by their own behavioral standards, often also served as substitutes for the family. A broad spectrum of alternative newspapers developed, growing in number from about 100 in 1976 to 240 in 1980.⁸

The search for an alternative life-style led in the second half of the 1970’s to the so-called new social movements that attempted “at the edge of society, in its recesses and islands, to construct a model of a quiet, harmonious, ecologically balanced and democratic civilization.”⁹ The adherents of these movements considered themselves politically part of the Left, but they did not wish to identify with any existing socialist structure in which the trends similar to those in capitalist society were criticized. As a result they considered it an error, for instance, to be concerned solely with questions of property ownership. In these new social movements the primary emphasis was to change the everyday life of the individual and to develop a life-style critical of consumerism. In addition to anarchistic ideas, other elements critical of the existing culture, including those of Marxist origin and those based on existentialism, played a role in forming the movements’ philosophies.¹⁰

The new social movements are without doubt an expression of the crisis of our times. Although concerns about protection of the environment link them to the ecological movement, the scope of their goals goes far beyond the environment. Large segments do not accept parliamentary democracy. The Spontis at the universities arose as an expression of a deep-seated longing for emotionalism, for an unrestricted expression of feelings. They attracted adherents because their philosophy gave expression to fears of the future and to a general search for utopia. But the movements also include autonomous groups that occasionally use force in demonstrations against the stationing of new U.S. missiles.

Although subcultural and countercultural tendencies existed in the 1950’s, the broad appeal of the new social movements is a new phenomenon. They encompass women’s movements, rural commune movements, pro-Third World groups, and many other types.¹¹ Basic opposition to technological progress appears common to most of them, and surveys show that these attitudes have spread, particularly among younger Germans. Asked if they saw technology as a blessing or a curse for humankind, 72 percent of those polled in 1966 saw it as a blessing. By 1976 this figure had fallen to 50 percent and in September 1981 to 30 percent.¹² Those fearing modern technology directly related this fear to its effects on health.

Phases in the Formation of the Green Party

The Green Party developed in five discemable phases. First, local citizen initiatives on the environment were formed, primarily in opposition to atomic power (beginning in 1973). [A citizen initiative is a group of citizens, or an effort by citizens united in a group to take a specific political action at the local level without reference to party activity.] In the second phase, consolidation took place at the state (Land) level, and voting groups and local parties were established, occasionally in competition with each other (beginning in late 1977). Third, the first nationwide consolidation was the group “Other Political Associations—The Greens,” which was formed prior to the elections to the European Parliament in 1979. Fourth, a federal party was founded in January 1980, and it first participated in federal elections in October 1980. Finally, the Greens became a party in parliament beginning on March 6, 1983.

Phase 1: Citizen Initiatives

The first indication of citizen initiatives can be traced to 1973. In 1975 such local initiatives sprang up throughout the Federal Republic; by 1977 nearly 1,000 such groups with over 300,000 members were affiliated with the Federal Association of Citizen Initiatives for the Protection of the Environment (BBU). In the mid-1970’s between 15,000 and 20,000 citizen initiatives were estimated to be in existence.¹³ Many were limited to local issues such as the prevention of highway construction. Nevertheless, the increased awareness of the need for environmental protection enabled these groups to reach a broad spectrum of the population.

Reaction to the construction of atomic power stations dominated this first phase. An example was the reaction to the plans of the government of Baden-Württemberg to construct an atomic power station at Wyhl. The plan engendered strong protests from local vintners, from opponents of atomic power, and from students at the nearby University of Freiburg. Regionally, the issue engendered cooperative action by German, Swiss, and French opposition groups. By June 1972, sixteen citizen initiative groups, primarily from Baden-Württemberg, founded the BBU and thereby created a coordinating office at the federal level. In some areas, the groups’ reactions, such as that against a fast-breeder reactor in September 1974, led to demonstrations that drew as many as 10,000 participants. Such mass demonstrations were increasingly used by groups of the extreme Left to influence the citizen initiative and ecology movements, leading to a polarization between proponents and opponents of the use of force. Citizen initiatives on the environment continued beyond this early phase and moved beyond local or regional issues. In 1980, according to the Federal Office of Environmental Protection about 5 million citizens were active in the movement, organized in 11,328 regional and 130 multiregional groupings.¹⁴

Although some early citizen initiatives had a strong middle-class/conservative coloration and were directed against specific measures considered threatening to the environment, those that desired the creation of an alternative culture became increasingly dominant as time went on. They propounded an ideology that sought basic opposition to the existing societal structure. This trend was strengthened as collaboration from a broader geographic area became important. The views of these groups were soon reflected in the ecological platform of the BBU. Its program viewed “destruction of the environment, economic inequality, social injustice, and increased dependence of the individual on the authorities” not as avoidable side effects but as “essential characteristics of the system” and therefore as the proper objects of criticism.¹⁵

Phase 2: State-Level Organizations

Beginning in late 1977 clear trends developed toward the consolidation of citizen initiatives into parties or voter initiatives. On December 11, 1977, a party calling itself the Green List for the Protection of the Environment was founded in Lower Saxony as a state-level organization, and its members elected Carl Beddermann as their chairman.¹⁶ In the election of June 4, 1978, this party obtained 3.9 percent of the votes cast. Beddermann had been the representative of the ecological wing of the citizen initiative movement. He and many of his colleagues saw politics as “the art of assuring the continued existence of humanity.”¹⁷ He was primarily critical of the euphoria about growth in modern industrial states but remained a supporter of the constitution and parliamentary democracy and an opponent of the use of force. From the outset, he differed with those elements that wanted to use the citizen initiative movement and the antiatomic power movement to further their own far-reaching political goals. Beddermann’s position within the party became increasingly weaker; his resignation in September 1978 symbolized the decreased influence of the middle-class wing in the party, even though compromises enabled a coalition to keep the party in existence rather than to have various constituent groups compete against each other. In other states of the Federal Republic competing lists of “green” or “rainbow” groups did appear, especially in the city-states of Hamburg, Bremen, and Berlin where a large, active student population may have been the key factor. The word “rainbow” is used to indicate those groups of various colorations referred to in German as “bunt.”

On January 29 and March 18, 1978, preelection conventions were held in Hamburg with BBU participation. The spectrum of participants reached from those desiring to protect nature, antiatomic power groups, and members of the the Communist Association (KB) to women’s groups and gay rights associations.¹⁸ The strength of the influence of the KB¹⁹ in this “Rainbow List/Defend Yourself!”—as the new group was called—was described by one of its activists in an October 1978 publication in which he states that it “had been subsumed by the KB.” It...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of Tables
• Foreword
• 1. The Formation of the Green Party
• 2. The Social Background of the Green Voters
• 3. Party and Caucus Structure
• 4. Composition of the Green Caucuses
• 5. The Policies of the Greens
• 6. The Greens and the SPD
• 7. The Relationship of the Greens to Communist Groups
• 8. The Greens: Power or Nuisance?
• Notes
• Suggested Readings
• List of Organizations
• Index of Personal Names