The Greens in the East: Those who support war, rearmament and social division cannot win here
Our author is an East German and an environmental activist. He still doesn't support the Green Party. A guest article.
I was 19. Not only does that sound pathetic, it's also the title of a DEFA film by Konrad Wolf, made two years before I was born. A film about homecoming, about arriving in a country that wanted to reinvent itself after a war. When I was 19, the GDR no longer existed. West Germany had reclaimed it, and I – like many – faced the question: What now? Today, decades later, I hear on the radio that the 64th anniversary of the construction of the Wall is being commemorated in Berlin. Speaking in Brandenburg, Maria Nooke, the state commissioner for the reappraisal of the SED dictatorship and wife of the CDU politician Günther Nooke, one of those civil rights champions who have found their place in a united Germany, is speaking about it. Many of us now suspect that this "anti-fascist protective wall" wasn't just propaganda. It had its ugly sides – and perhaps even one that protected against something that today once again seems threatening.
So now the Greens want to "win back East Germany." A 17-member commission is supposed to accomplish this. The composition seems, to put it mildly, predictable: a who's who of church-influenced civil rights activists and GDR dissidents, supplemented by a few familiar East German names – including Marianne Birthler, Katrin Göring-Eckardt, and the historian Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, with whom I once clashed in a heated social media debate. This lineup represents less a new perspective on the East than a continuation of the interpretation of the GDR that has dominated since 1990.
Sabine Rennefanz, a journalist originally from East Germany, recently wrote in Der Spiegel that the Greens are "the misunderstanding between East and West that has become a party." She described how a prominent Green politician would rather be a guest in Kyiv than in an East German city—an honest but revealing statement. Rennefanz points out that the Greens are perceived in the East as a "West German academic and elite party that is removed from everyday life." She criticizes the cultural divide: A party leadership shaped by the consumer-oriented "Generation Golf" and their millennial successors sees their West German socialization as the norm and is blind to other life experiences.
I agree with Rennefanz when she describes the Greens' helplessness. But when she ultimately calls for a "pan-German approach," I suspect that in practice this means: Leave the East behind us—then we'll be a united West German. This is where my resistance arises. The East wasn't just a compass point, but an attempt at a socialist alternative to the West German model. This idea didn't die because the GDR failed politically. It lives on because the fundamental idea—a community based on solidarity, not for profit—is simply human.
Why nature and species conservation are not the Green Party’s monopolyRennefanz believes the Greens could score points in the East with nature and species conservation. In my view, this is a mistake. In my home region of Brandenburg, far from the Berlin suburbs, I see that even in their own self-image, conservative local politicians with real backbone could represent these issues more credibly than a party that simultaneously advocates military operations, promotes arms exports, and approves gigantic wind power projects in nature reserves. Anyone who prioritizes "green capitalism" over everything else loses all moral authority to operate left of center.
My long, late disappointmentFor more than 30 years, I personally viewed the Greens as the "lesser evil." When the SED successor party became unviable as a viable option for socialists, "Green" seemed the only alternative. I supported many things that were also included in the Green platform: refugee aid, agricultural reform, local peace initiatives. However, I never received support from the Greens.
An example: A good ten years ago, I filed a complaint with the EU against the German practice of stocking organic egg-laying hen houses with far more than the permitted 3,000 birds. Leading Greens ducked the issue because they didn't want to disrupt the organic discount market. The final chapter of my Green disappointment began in February 2022: A supposed peace party became one of the loudest voices for arms deliveries and war. I remember Foreign Minister Baerbock campaigning in Königs Wusterhausen and offering only evasive phrases when I asked her, "When will you help end the killing in Ukraine?" Today, she sits at the UN – and the wars continue.
1989/90 – Missed reform, hijacked movementWhen the Wall fell, a large part of the civil society movement in the GDR wanted to democratically reform socialism, not abolish it. The People's Chamber elections of March 1990 brought a landslide: Almost 75 percent voted for West German parties or their offshoots. This paved the way for the "peaceful counterrevolution." The West's takeover also swept away those East German actors seeking a third way. But the idea of an alternative persisted—and remains the reason why many East Germans lack enthusiasm for parties that merely paint the West green.
No green future in the EastThe Left exists today only in name. Between the petty-bourgeois Wagenknecht group and a hip, yet system-adapted "carnival socialism" à la Reichinnek, there is no real force that consistently advocates for social justice. Even the Greens cannot fill this gap. Anyone who supports war, rearmament, and social division, who subordinates environmental policy to the market, is no partner for a society based on solidarity.
No hate – but clear consequencesI don't hate the Greens. I begrudge them every committed grassroots activist who still believes they can make a difference. I still talk to individual Greens today, just as I talk to individual soldiers in the Bundeswehr, even though I was presented with their army as a class-hostile one – not as personal opponents, but as representatives of a system I reject. But the Green label should no longer be used by a party whose actions represent the opposite of its historical roots. In Brandenburg, where I live, the Greens were for a long time a little less belligerent and a little closer to nature conservation than elsewhere. But here, too, the federal leadership sacrificed the state party to its own power games. They are gone – and life goes on. The question remains: Do we want to be a bourgeois democracy – or have the courage to become a democracy based on solidarity?
Matthias Paul Rackwitz, born in 1970 in East Berlin and never far from this city, holds a degree in horticulture from Humboldt University, is a volunteer conservationist with the Dahmeland Nature Conservation Association, and a peace activist with the Dahme-Spreewald Initiative for Peace and Disarmament .
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