By Frank Noakes
FRANKFURT — Anna Seifert, a Green member of the Frankfurt city parliament, talked to Green Left Weekly about the local elections in the state of Hesse on March 7. Smaller parties of the left and right achieved swings, confirming a European-wide trend away from the major parties.
The Greens increased their representation in the Frankfurt city parliament from 10 to 15, whilst the ultraright Republicans came from nowhere a year ago to occupy 10 seats in the 93-member council. The Greens and Republicans received 14% and 9.3% respectively.
The conservative Christian Democratic Union, the party of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, lost 3.2% of its 1989 vote; the Social Democratic Party fell 8.1% to 32%. A four-year-old parliamentary coalition between the Social Democrats and the Greens clings to a slim majority on the council.
Led by former SS officer Franz Schonhuber, the Republicans polled well throughout the state, receiving 13% outside Frankfurt.
With 21 racist-inspired murders last year — more than in 1932, on the eve of Hitler's triumph — the relatively high Republican vote must be taken seriously, said Seifert.
"I'm sure there's still a proportion of people voting for the Republicans who do it out of a knee-jerk discontent at what's going on. There's a sense in which it's a protest vote."
Until recently, recession had been virtually unknown to postwar German generations. Suddenly that is changing; inadequate housing, rising unemployment and lower expectations are breeding a discontent that the far right is able to feed off.
"But then there's a substantial number who do vote for them because of racist sentiments. Some are neo-Nazis as well. In the past the Greens have said 'These people aren't really racists'. I think we really didn't want to confront the fact that there are a lot of people around who are capable of doing the sort of things that have been happening. We have to confront that now."
The Greens' result, a 3.8% increase on 1989, is an important advance which has been somewhat overshadowed by interest in the Republican vote.
"For a long time industry was happy to advertise by saying, 'We're very eco-conscious, we're doing all the right things'. Now we actually have managers coming out saying: 'Well, things are getting really difficult, and after unification [of east and west Germany] we really need the money. Maybe we should have 10 years when we concentrate on getting the country on its feet, then we can return to ecological problems'." says Seifert.
"We stood on the things that we have managed to achieve, and which we tried to do but were unable to because of the SPD, like the reduction of traffic in the city, which the SPD have been very scared to do.
"I actually think that we got the increased vote because people recognised quite a lot of good work had been done. It was a vote for actually going into government and trying to do something."
A new left green formation, Ecological Left, received 1.3% of the vote in Frankfurt. Made up of ex-members of the Greens and the Party of Democratic Socialism, it failed to attract the support of other left groups. The PDS, whose 170,000 members are mainly situated in eastern Germany, did not stand candidates.