There he is, sitting in the street café in Haidhausen, looking at his cup of espresso and the shards of a political career, and still can’t believe it. Politically active for more than 40 years, co-founded the Greens in Munich and Bavaria, the first time in the city council from 1986 to 1990. In the 1990s even head of state, now back in the town hall since 2020, after a 30-year break. It was supposed to round off his political life, he wanted to be there when the city was finally made ecologically fit for the future. And now: all over. From one day to the next, because of that one tweet on the Twitter platform that he should never have tampered with.
On Sunday evening on the way back from Greece, Bernd Schreyer put the news online that for someone like him, politics is going on vacation and back again. He spent a lot of time surfing the net, reading how his party and his basic beliefs were being beaten up. But that’s not an excuse, someone who’s been there for so long knows that at 71. He should never have written those words, he knows that. “Although there was never a ban on heating, it was possible to incite against the Greens as if they were the ‘new Jews’ who have to be ‘eradicated’ in order to bring all happiness and prosperity back to Germany.” So it was on Sunday evening on his Twitter account.
He publicly apologized and resigned
The day after he had long since deleted the message, his career as a city councilor just lasted past noon on Monday. He apologized publicly and resigned his mandate, the message came at around 2 p.m. Schreyer knows the relentlessness of the Greens in a Holocaust comparison, and the accompanying downplaying of the Holocaust. But how did it come about that someone whom you classify in his party as having absolute integrity got so lost? Someone who took to the streets as an anti-fascist as early as the 1970s? And what does his almost brutal departure say about the party he helped found in Bavaria?
The now former city councilor Bernd Schreyer does not want to justify this fatal tweet in the conversation, this tweet that he would so much like to get back. But when he talks about how this could have happened, a window opens that gives a glimpse into a deeply injured green soul. This condition is likely to be particularly pronounced in someone who was there from the start to “save the world,” as he puts it.
But the thoughts also allow conclusions to be drawn about the emotional state in his party, many of whom are just like him. “I have the feeling that after 40 years of fighting, the last window is closing,” says Schreyer. He means the window in which the earth can still be saved. “I’ve had so much hope over the past few years, Fridays for Future have come up.” And now? “Such a hopelessness that we really tear something.”
His party is currently under pressure from all sides. From the coalition partners SPD and FDP in Berlin, from the conservatives anyway, but also from radical climate protectionists, for whom the Greens have become too tame and too lame. The heating law is flying in the face of the party, even if many, like Schreyer, are convinced that the way is the right one. Then the trouble with Robert Habeck’s State Secretary Patrick Graichen, suddenly the others accused the morally conscious Greens of Felt decisions. Schreyer was one of those who shared the defense of the green world online – and had to realize that Graichen was unstoppable. And experience the scorn and malice that something like this happens to the Greens.
But what scares Schreyer “a shit scared” is the feeling that right-wing extremists and populists are increasingly dictating the political discourse. That the conservative forces in Bavaria like the CSU and the Free Voters let it go or, as recently at the anti-heating law demo in Erding, encourage it. Photos are circulating of a woman who wrote “Hang the Greens as long as there are still trees” on her yellow safety vest. You can find a lot of hateful comments about the Greens online, and it all has an effect on someone like him. “When the Greens go down, they feel like they’ve won,” he says. But if the Greens go down, which party will save the world from the climate crisis?
Stop Bernd. But this one time it was too much.
Schreyer was inspired by the Club of Rome in the 1970s. At that time he fought for the zero-degree goal, i.e. that the warming of the earth by humans can still be completely stopped. In the meantime, the 1.5-degree target has long since been achieved, and the two before the decimal point can hardly be prevented. Schreyer is certain that people’s existence is now at stake. And from his point of view, the other parties have nothing in mind but to defeat the Greens. “I was highly emotional, the impending decline made me panic.” And then, after extensive reading of many hate postings on the net, he wrote his tweet. People who know him know that sometimes he gets away with it. Stop Bernd. But this one time it was too much.
“Terrible,” this tweet. He says himself. He was ready to take quick action, maybe wanted to sleep on it one more night. That didn’t happen, the pressure was high. In another party, someone like Schreyer might have gotten another chance after such a mistake. Not with the Greens.
Many in the city council group are said to have been touched, stunned by the tweet, but also moved by the severity of the consequences that followed. No one stopped Schreyer from retreating. “We appreciate his work on the city council and his commitment to the party. He was a big name when it came to social and housing policy. Nevertheless, you are responsible for what you post,” said parliamentary group leader Dominik Krause in retrospect on Friday. It doesn’t get any warmer in public, it must not sound like a justification. During this time nobody wants to offer another target for attack, the concern of doing something wrong can be felt everywhere.
The Greens are a party with high moral standards. To all political competitors, including yourself. There is a great deal of self-confidence in doing the right thing. And to want. But anyone who harshly criticizes others for missteps also gives themselves leeway. A moral superiority that is located in oneself leads to such a harsh consequence as in the case of Schreyer. Anyone who criticizes every other Holocaust comparison so harshly cannot claim any mitigating circumstances for himself. Even if nobody would accuse Schreyer of wanting to postpone the discourse or actually not acknowledging the suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust.
His children call Munich’s first wind turbine “Papa’s” wind turbine
It doesn’t help that someone co-founded the party in town. That one wanted to round off his political work on the city council after retiring from the profession with stations in two green mayor’s offices and as an employee in the housing office. “Bitter. So bitter,” Schreyer exclaims while looking up, over the espresso cup. It does not console him – possibly yet – that in retrospect he has already left “added value”. “We made the city council colorful,” he says, looking back on the group’s beginnings. It’s not without reason that his children call Munich’s first wind turbine “Papa’s” wind turbine out in Fröttmaning.
Schreyer is someone who, despite all his bitterness, never forgets how to laugh. You can tell when he tells one of his favorite anecdotes from his political life. In 1981, he and like-minded people in a human chain blocked the exhaust-polluted Laim underpass and caused a huge traffic jam. The police only got through on foot, spies reported the arrival. As a result, only one man was arrested: the journalist from Würmtal messengerswho didn’t understand the signal to flee.
But Schreyer doesn’t want to lose himself only in memories, it’s quite possible that you’ll meet him again somewhere on the fringes of city politics. “Anyone who knows me knows that I’ll find something,” he says. In the city council, the younger ones would have to get the ecological turnaround right. “I rely on those who are highly committed,” he says. Then he makes his way home, from Haidhausen down into the Au.