156 FRANK UEKÖTTER
cians to make a name for themselves, especially since the defi ciency of
existing regulatory policies was largely beyond debate. The career po-
tential was particularly important in the years after the postwar boom. In
an age of economic stagnation and growing doubts over state planning,
environmental policy stood out as one of the few arenas where politicians
could still hope for massive budget increases, expansion of jurisdictions,
and new staff. There is ground to suspect that this was a general pat-
tern in Western states at the time, but it was particularly successful in
West Germany. We can compile an impressive list of politicians whose
careers took off due to their involvement in environmental policy issues:
Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Joschka Fischer, Jo Leinen, Klaus Matthiesen,
Monika Griefahn, Jochen Flasbarth, Fritz Vahrenholt, Max Streibl, and
Klaus Töpfer.^31
Environmental policy was a remarkably eff ective springboard for a ca-
reer in politics. The story of Joschka Fischer, the taxi driver from Frankfurt
who became the vice chancellor of Germany, is a particularly spectacular
example of how environmental policy could provide a heretofore nonex-
istent path into the political elite.^32 But at the same, we should not forget
those who left or gave up at some point. When Wolfgang Sternstein, who
had been a member of the board of the BBU for several years, visited
Wüstenhagen in Freiburg years after the latter had stepped down from
offi ce, he encountered “a bitter old man who complained about every-
thing under the sun.”^33 The strength of the German environmental move-
ment has often been admired from abroad, but some people paid a high
personal price along the way.
Policies did not lack ambition in the 1970s, but a sense of disillusion-
ment set in after a while. This was perhaps inevitable in an approach that
adhered to the model of environmental policy “from above,” which was
one of the notable parallels between East and West. While political lead-
ers specifi ed far-reaching goals and couched them in bold rhetoric, im-
plementation of policies was left to subordinates, whose fate was largely
beyond the leaders’ purview. Implementation was always complicated in
environmental policy, but politicians were loath to hear too much about
these complications.
Like the Federal Republic, the GDR’s leaders were clear that environ-
mental problems had to be taken seriously. The new general secretary of
the central committee of the SED, Erich Honecker, mentioned environ-
mental protection in his speech at the Eighth Party Congress in 1971. He
even called upon the people to bring environmental problems to the at-
tention of state authorities.^34 In the GDR, environmental policy fell under
the rubric of the widely cited “unity of economic and social policy,” which
was given a green ideological complement with the “unity of economy