There are images that never fade from a country’s memory, from its political and popular consciousness. One of them is that of Joschka Fischer (Gerabronn, Germany, 78 years old) wearing sneakers and being sworn in as a minister in the state of Hesse in 1985. For the first time, the Greens, a grassroots movement born a few years earlier, entered a regional government. It was a turning point. Thirteen years later, Fischer would become vice-chancellor and foreign minister in the first federal government with the Greens, allied with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s Social Democratic Party.
© Gene Glover
How could it have happened? That is the question. German historians, like Captain Ahab with the white whale, continue to obsessively pursue it. More than 80 years after the end of Nazism, they still haven’t found a definitive or complete answer.
© brandstaetter images (Getty Images)
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