ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: FROM RED TO GREEN IN ... - Isioma

component of this paradigm helped bring homosexuals, women, and other
minorities into the party, thus attracting their voices to the constitutional system.
An obvious effect of the rise of the ecology paradigm was the creation of
the West German Green Party. This in turn helped integrate radical leftists into
the parliamentary system. The example of Joschka Fischer, prominent Green and
Germany’s Foreign Minister at the time of writing, illustrates this phenomenon.
In early 2001, revelations about Fischer’s past as a militant street fighter in
Frankfurt sparked an unprecedented debate about the legacy of the 1968 student
revolt in West Germany and the violent decade of the 1970s. 31
Some have
questioned whether someone who once threw stones in street protests should
now represent Germany internationally. This controversy ignored the most
interesting aspect, however: what Daniel Cohn-Bendit called the passage “from
state-hater to state’s representative.” 32
It is my assertion that the 1970s and 1980s witnessed a crucial
transformation of West German political culture that enabled such a transition. 33
The Green Party helped bring such individuals as Fischer into the political
31
For a good summary of the controversy, see M. Anne Sa’adah, “Ein
Staatsmann mit Geschichte: Joschka Fischer’s German Past,” German Politics and
Society 19, no. 3 (2001).
32
Vom Staatshasser zum Staatsrepräsentanten. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, “Ein
Segen für dieses Land,” interview. Der Spiegel 5 (29 January 2001), 86.
33
For a sometimes hilarious account of this transformation, see Till Meyer,
Staatsfeind (Hamburg: Spiegel Buchverlag, 1996). Meyer describes the changes
that had occurred in the Left while he was in prison for terrorism: according to
21