Press Conference by Otto Schily, Petra Kelly, and Reiner Trampert (March 7, 1983)

In the Bundestag elections of March 6, 1983, the Greens secured 5.6% of the vote, a result high enough for them to be allowed representation in the West German parliament for the first time. At a press conference in Bonn the day after the election, the eventual spokespersons for the Green Party Bundestag faction, Otto Schily (left) and Petra Kelly (middle), as well as the speaker of the federal committee of the Greens, Rainer Trampert (right), discussed their success. At this point, the Greens were an ideologically heterogeneous movement: Schily belonged to the pragmatic practitioners of Realpolitik (“Realos”) and advocated a coalition with the SPD; Kelly and Trampert, on the other hand, were idealistic fundamentalists (“Fundis”). There were also a number of other individualistic currents within the party, including one that supported conservative values.

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Courtesy of the German Information Center