Green Stronghold Falls in Germany Coalition Partner's Loss Could Spell End of Official National Green Control By Josh Mahan

BERLIN -- Two weeks ago Roselle and I were working hard in our cramped studio above Charlie’s when he burst into a newly-developed set of yoga-at-your-computer exercises and elbowed me in the head. I had been reading feverishly about trouble for the Green Party on Germany’s political scene. Apparently the Social Democrats and the Christian Democratic Union were in a neck-and-neck race for the Chancellor’s seat. And every good green knows that the Green Party’s coalition with the Social Democrats is one of the main reasons Germany stands out as a turnaround environmental success story. Hearing that the Greens could be on the verge of being ousted as a junior partner, coupled with the jar to the head from Roselle was all I could take. We had a small breakdown in the office.

The melee that ensued resulted in the filing cabinet toppling through the thin wall and a demolished answering machine. Nagasaki Johnson! We both decided it was time for a vacation. Roselle would roll downhill to Portland, in wanderlust of steamed oysters worth a shuck and heady northwestern beer.

I, on the other hand, would be dispatched to monitor the important and disputed election in Europe during this difficult recount time. Why wait for the information to filter into the States? Our mission: hit the German streets and look for signs of Green Life. Besides we’ve heard about some hard-nosed Lowbaggers in Germany, a country home to a bona fide Squatter’s Movement.

I’ll admit that I started my journeys with a prejudice. Noted as the birthplace of modern American forestry, I’ve never really trusted the German environmental ethic. Not after they delivered the regimented and technocratic leagues of foresters to systematically plunder the forests of the new world. This was the government agency that has had to be reigned in by private citizens throughout its service. They’ve reformed a bit, but they still can’t help but get their paws into roadless lands, like some sick Jethro Tull song.

As I said before, seeing what the German-founded forestry system had morphed into in America left me skeptical of German green ethics. To the contrary, I found a vibrant German green contingent. A national joke involves the recycling of the teabag and how it requires the use of all four recycling options found on every corner of the larger cities, earning German’s the title of Europe’s most earnest recyclers.

Acting as a junior party in Germany’s coalition government, the Green Party has had a noticeable effect on the country’s landscape. In Germany Green policies are taken seriously, and considered advancements on civilized society instead of impediments, as largely painted by the American political pundits. Whether German Greens are dropping nuclear power and instead building some of the world’s largest solar power plants, or cleaning up the most toxic rivers, Germany is cognoscente of the natural web. In 1970 the Rhine was considered dead, and today salmon and sea trout again make their historic runs, thanks, in part, to groups like the Rhine Action Program. Farmland is reforesting. Sprawl is nonexistent compared to the states, and mass transit reigns supreme.

While Germany is on the up and up, battling acid rain and reintroducing extinct mammals, one also has to realize that they pushed their land right to the brink before cleaning it up. Is this just the human condition? Can Americans learn vicariously one of the lessons that Germany had to learn the hard way? Or will we continue our march to the sea?

Back in Berlin, trying to track down the hush-hush inner-circle meetings of top Greens, I stumbled upon the Tacheles artist community on Oranienburger Street, a Lowbagger joint if I’ve ever seen one. A dilapidated Nazi headquarters building, it has housed some of Berlin’s most vigorous political artists since the dogged creators stormed the six-story ruin at the height of Germany’s squatter movement in 1989. A stroll through its grounds is pure visual vertigo as artists strike hard with twisted images of this modern world. It speaks against a cold, industrial climate. The message is hard-line, and would certainly have been illegal under the Nazis who once occupied the building. Seeing the fluid message of resistance scrawled upon every corner of that building induced a euphoria only felt at a spot in the world where a vicious wrong has been righted.

From the sixth floor of the Tacheles, I gazed across the skyline of Berlin, complete with its famous Dom. Though the political landscape was invisible Berlin had changed since I had arrived. Earlier that day, the charismatic Green Party leader Joschka Fischer had resigned from the party. Bickering amongst the party left the fickle group wondering how to stand on their own two feet, instead of clinging as a junior partner (though they’ve won 8 percent of the vote, and 51 seats in the parliament). And it looked as if the Right Wingers had actually squeaked out the election by less than a percentage point, though German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder seems to have no intention of stepping down. Interesting days are certain to follow in Germany.

Josh Mahan edits and designs Lowbagger.org from the green district of Missoula, Mont.