In 1987, then West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his party the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) ran a re-election campaign with the slogan, Weiter so, Deutschland. (“More of the same, Germany”), promising stability and security in the years to come.
They ended up winning, but Germany—and the world—was drastically transformed with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Fast forward to 2021 and Germany and Kohl’s one-time protégé Angela Merkel is about to step down as chancellor after 16 years at the helm. A fixture of life and a living embodiment of weiter so, Merkel’s departure presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for change in German politics.
“These elections are historic,” said Anna Klein, a 27 year old teacher and evangelical in the central German state of Thuringia, “we are coming off our first female chancellor and we have the opportunity to build on her legacy, to see if we elect a woman again and move in an even more transformational direction.”
Until April, the consensus was that despite the profound quandary of a political party bereft of Merkel’s calm, disciplined leadership, her CDU and its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) in Bavaria, would remain the dominant force in German politics. Even more weiter so, it seemed.
But then, with the support of younger evangelicals like Klein, the Green Party seems to be pulling ahead in polls. It may garner enough votes to form a coalition government with the conservative bloc, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU).
Though the idea of a progressive party (the Greens) and a conservative bloc (CDU/CSU) working hand-in-hand to govern might sound strange, the environmental and protest party has shifted toward the mainstream in recent years, becoming part of Germany’s new, forward-looking political middle ground.
There, at the heart of this collective of political compromise, one finds a wide swathe of evangelical voters whose values and varied priorities seem to pair well with a coupling between the Greens and CDU/CSU.