ENTANGLED ECOLOGIES 167
were profound diff erences in terms of environmental thought and politi-
cal style, and also a profound lack of interest in the views and routines of
the other side. The West German Green Party drew many members from
a political community where the question of reunifi cation was meaning-
less because the persistence of a divided Germany was considered to be a
suitable punishment for the evils of National Socialism. In East Germany,
politicians from the Bündnis 90 and the Grüne in the GDR failed to take a
position on the issue of German reunifi cation leading up to the elections
for the People’s Chamber in March 1990.^84 In the federal election cam-
paign after unifi cation in 1990, the Green Party focused ostentatiously on
climate change: “Everyone is talking about Germany. We’re talking about
the weather.”^85 Needless to say, environmental activists were hardly the
only ones who had trouble understanding their brothers and sisters in the
“other” Germany. But few groups had to struggle quite as much to accept
their new compatriots as fellow citizens in the fi rst place.
The real turning point for the Greens after reunifi cation came with the
federal elections on 2 December 1990, when the party failed to achieve
the 5-percent vote threshold necessary to make it into parliament. This
came as a shock to the Greens, as it followed upon the heels of a decade
fi lled with many electoral victories and ever growing public acclaim. Not
surprisingly, therefore, its First National Party Congress for all of Ger-
many took place in Neumünster in April 1991 under the banner of re-
newal. Petra Kelly failed dismally in her bid to become speaker, and the
radical environmentalists who supported Jutta Ditfurth decided to split
from the party shortly thereafter.^86 On the whole, the party became more
disciplined, more professional, and more moderate. For the fi rst time,
a red-green coalition of social democrats and the Green Party survived
an entire legislative term in Lower Saxony. The fact that it did so under
the leadership of Gerhard Schröder, chancellor of a red-green federal
government from 1998 to 2005, makes it tempting to draw simple tele-
ological lines forward. The path toward the federal red-green coalition
had far too many “ifs” and “buts” to depict it as the inevitable conclusion
of the greening of Germany. But for all the caveats, it remains doubtful
whether a stable red-green federal government would have been feasible
without the internal refl ection process that took place within the Green
Party after 1990.
But before the Green Party could dream of taking over federal min-
istries, it had to unify two parties with distinct West German and East
German fl avors. It was a long and diffi cult process, particularly for the
East German side. The fusion of the Greens with the remains of the East
German civil rights movement dragged on until 1993, not necessarily
because of organizational issues, but rather because many East Germans