Alliance 90/The Greens
독일 녹색당
A German political party formed on 14 May 1993 by the merger of The Greens (Die Grünen), founded in West Germany at Karlsruhe in January 1980, with Alliance 90, formed by the East German civic movements of 1989–1990. Growing out of the anti-nuclear, environmental and peace movements, the New Left of the 1970s and the new social movements, it adopted the four pillars of ecology, social responsibility, grassroots democracy and non-violence. It first entered the Bundestag in 1983 and took part in the federal government in 1998–2005 and 2021–2025.
In depth
Between 1977 and 1979 local parties campaigning on environmental and peace issues sprang up across West Germany. In February 1979 the Green Action Future (GAZ), the Green List for Environmental Protection (GLU) and others formed the electoral alliance SPV–Die Grünen to contest the first European Parliament elections; Petra Kelly and Roland Vogt of the executive of the Federal Association of Citizens’ Initiatives for Environmental Protection (BBU) joined it, and it was supported by the writer Heinrich Böll and the socialist activist Rudi Dutschke. Alternative left currents — the extra-parliamentary opposition, the West German student movement, the K-groups and the Spontis — also fed into the new party. In October 1979 the Bremen Green List became the first green party to win seats in a state parliament, and it elected Dutschke as a delegate to the federal founding congress. The Greens were founded as a national party at Karlsruhe on 12–13 January 1980, proclaiming the “four pillars” of ecology, social responsibility, grassroots democracy and non-violence.
In 1983 the Greens entered the Bundestag for the first time with 5.6% of the second votes and 27 deputies. In 1985–1987 a red–green coalition with the SPD in Hesse made Joschka Fischer the first Green state minister, and in the 1987 federal election, the year after the Chernobyl disaster, the party won 8.3%. Throughout these years bitter disputes between the fundamentalists (Fundis) and the pragmatic realists (Realos) over the party’s relation to the system and to coalitions dominated its public image. After reunification the West German Greens failed to clear the five per cent threshold in the 1990 federal election, while in the East Alliance 90 — formed by the Initiative for Peace and Human Rights, Democracy Now and New Forum in the autumn of 1989 — won seats together with the East German Green Party and others. Many eco-socialists left the party in 1990–1992, and on 14 May 1993 the Greens merged with Alliance 90 to form Alliance 90/The Greens.
Back in the Bundestag as a parliamentary group from 1994, the party first joined the federal government in the red–green coalition with the SPD of 1998–2005. After Fischer became foreign minister in 1998 Germany took part in the Kosovo War and the war in Afghanistan, and part of the party’s pacifist wing left. In opposition from 2005 to 2021, it governed in 2021–2025 in the traffic-light coalition with the SPD and the FDP and, after that coalition collapsed, in a red–green minority government; since 2025 it has again been in opposition.