Annual review 2023: Like a stern reporter “probably the longest” Party conference survived

Making-of is the name of our new format. We want to give you a personal look behind the scenes, tell you about our everyday journalistic life and our research. We’re starting a little series looking back at our moments in 2023.

That can’t be! The anticipation gives way to questions when I hear that, of all things, my first party conference is “probably longest” in the history of the Greens. Four days in the Karlsruhe Trade Fair, from 9 in the morning until late at night – is that like a school trip? And were school trips actually fun?

Only seven weeks ago I was at star begun. It’s now the end of November and the Greens don’t just want to adjust their position in the government. The delegates from the district associations will also re-elect the party chairmen and all candidates for the 2024 European elections.

Jesus Christ, election, that also requires a program. The green base has a lot to criticize about the party leadership’s draft; over 1,400 amendments have been submitted in advance. The agenda stipulates an end after midnight on almost all days. And the fact that two absent CDU grandees, Friedrich Merz and Konrad Adenauer, would take on the main roles at a Green party conference – no one sang that to me either. the CDU Chancellor only in the program debate.

Everyone is trapped in some way

It’s actually a bit like a school trip, there’s a lot to experience, not enough to eat, there’s a lot of arguing – and everyone is somehow trapped. The first goes on strike on the second day coffee machine. Are over 800 tired delegates and almost 2,000 guests a few coffee drinkers too many? Whether a member of the Bundestag, a simple party member or a journalist, everyone is the same when faced with a broken coffee machine. At one point, a top Green party member comes past the back rows (where the journalists are sitting) and croaks in a broken voice: “I’m not sure what my hotel looks like from the inside.” Then she moves on laughing.

Sometimes, I’m learning, you have to as a party conference observer Luck – that you are not sitting in the toilet or having lunch when something unexpectedly entertaining happens. It was to be expected that the course of migration policy was discussed emotionally on Saturday evening.

Other times I just happen to arrive just in time. For example, to hear how the party leftist Claudia Roth is forced to give a defense speech on the former CDU chancellor Konrad Adenauer to swing. “Yes, Adenauer was definitely not a feminist”she calls, but…

What happened? In the draft for the European election program, the party leadership wrote a sentence from the first Federal Chancellor: “The unit Europe was a dream of few. She became a hope for many. It is a necessity for all of us today.”

The only quote in the more than 100-page program should come from a conservative? No way! Shirin Cress from the Berlin-Mitte district association has submitted an application. She demands that the quote be deleted. “Adenauer was problematic in his time and is still problematic today”, she says at the lectern. A quote cannot be viewed independently of a person. Her vision of Europe is feminist, anti-fascist – and her name is not Konrad Adenauer.

Enter State Secretary for Culture Roth: The quote is about the beginning of the European idea. “He tried to reach out to France. He tried to contribute to reconciliation.” The party leadership must have sensed that Cress hits a nerve with many. So Roth quickly suggests a compromise: How about adding two more quotes to the program, from women? You could also use Adenauer for that keep inside.

Nice try, but in the end it was in vain. Significantly more hands with voting cards go for Cress upwards. The Greens are kicking Adenauer from their program. A true spectacle, how beautiful party democracy is!