The German Greens were abused in the campaign in Bavaria and had to defend unpopular federal policies. Nevertheless, they believe they are on track for a relatively good electoral result.
Green Party candidates in Bavaria have become accustomed to verbal abuse in campaigning, but even they were shocked by what happened at an event in Neu-Ulm in mid-September, when leading candidates Katharina Schulze and Ludwig Hartmann threw a stone at them. This was, as Schulze told journalists in Munich earlier this week, "a depressing point".
No one was injured in the incident and the suspect was quickly apprehended at the scene. Prosecutors said the 44-year-old man was under the influence of alcohol and was a member of what a spokesman called a "COVID-measurement critic scene."
Schulze appears at three to five election events a day and insisted that such abuse was the exception. Sometimes events get disrupted, she said, but she has seen the same hecklers at different venues and suspects there is a small group of organized activists following them.
However, the Neu-Ulm incident illustrates the overheated state of political debate in Germany and the unrelenting vitriol that has been hurled at the Green Party on the internet and in the right-wing media in recent weeks.
Schulze blamed the other candidates: "I think our political rivals like to add fuel to the fire, as if they want to stir things up," Schulze said. "The second thing is that we are experiencing democracy being attacked from different sides and everywhere. Now we are seeing it in Germany."
Cities versus countries
The Green Party in Germany usually has the best results among educated people in cities. This makes things difficult for the Bavarian Greens, because Germany's largest state has a lot of rural voters who are traditionally sceptical of the Green Party.
Moreover, these voters have been put off by the policies of the centre-left federal government coalition of which the Green Party is a part, which are often presented as detrimental to rural lifestyles.
For example, the proposed new law on the replacement of fossil fuel heating systems has led many Bavarian property-owning voters to fear that they will no longer be able to heat their homes with wood, which would mean costly renovations. Hoping to avert the inevitable backlash, Bavaria's Greens said in April that they had persuaded the Green Party's economics minister, Robert Habeck, to rework the heating law to allow people to heat with wood.
Meanwhile, Ludwig Hartmann accused Bavarian politicians of mimicking the tactics of right-wing populists around the world and creating a false conflict between urban and rural voters, which he called a "fatal development". Bavaria's unique strength, he said, has always been that economic power is not concentrated in cities, so the interests of cities like Munich, where the Green Party is strong, are actually aligned with those of rural areas.
Now he complained that every debate was turning into a dispute between town and country. This happened recently when a Green politician called on Bavaria to extend the water protection zones - something the agricultural industry immediately rejected because it would mean reducing the amount of chemical fertiliser they can use.
"Now they say water is only for cities," Hartmann said. "We don't want that debate here. We need each other."
Prejudice against the Greens
Despite these attempts at moderation, the Christian Social Union (CSU), the centre-right party that still dominates Bavaria, has declared the Green Party a pariah.
CSU leader and Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder has firmly ruled out a coalition with environmentalists and in interviews regularly portrays the Greens as a party that wants to legalise cannabis while banning sweets for children and sausages for adults.
"The Greens live in a world of fantasy and bans," he told Bild in March. "They are the number one party of prohibition: Banning meat, firecrackers, car washes, advertising and balloons are just a small selection of their plans. Ultimately, they want a different republic and to re-educate Germans. But most people don't want to dance to the green tune."
Nevertheless, the Bavarian Green candidates Schulze and Hartmann remain optimistic and believe that a coalition with the conservative CSU is still possible. "If there's one thing you can count on, it's that Söder will change his mind," Hartmann insists, before suggesting that the CSU's commitment to its current coalition with the populist Free Democrats is just a campaign tactic.
Indeed, Söder has in the past donned various political costumes as expediency demanded. In 2020, the Bavarian Prime Minister had himself photographed hugging a tree while promising to plant 30 million new trees in the state. Even in his speech on Monday, between denigrating Berlin and its "untouchable" politicians, Söder stressed that he understood the threat of climate change, illustrating this with a very Bavarian image of disappearing snow on Germany's highest mountain, the Zugspitze.
And younger CSU voters appreciate it. Among Söder's audience in Ebersberg was Daniel Tibursky, a 15-year-old newcomer to the conservative youth organisation Junge Union, who said that environmental campaigns like Fridays for Future have influenced CSU politics in the last few years.
"It's good to see our state premier explaining that Bavaria is so strong and stable thanks to the CSU," he told DW. "Of course we want to be climate neutral, which is very important for my generation, but we have to do it with a clear head."
Despite anti-Green aggression from all conservative currents - from the CSU to the Free Voters to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) - antipathy towards the Greens in Bavaria may not be as deep as the Neu-Ulm stone-throwing incident might suggest.
The Bavarian Greens are currently polling around 14-15 % and are competing for second place with the right-wing populist Free Voters. This result would be lower than the spectacular high the Greens reached in the 2018 Bavarian elections (17.6 %), but still significantly higher than the single-digit results the party has had to settle for in every other Bavarian election before.
That is why Schulze remains so optimistic: "There is still a lot to do!"
DW/Roz
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