It should be a female dual leadership, but also a team from different generations, party wings and temperaments. After the left-wing economic politician Katharina Dröge, 37, the Reala Britta Haßelmann, 59, announced her application for the Green parliamentary group chairmanship in the Bundestag on Friday. The Greens’ long-time first parliamentary director, who is also respected beyond her own ranks as an advocate for democratic rights, should be elected on Tuesday. “I really want to represent the Greens in this new role after 16 years of opposition,” she said Süddeutsche Zeitung. “I think I have shown in recent years that I can represent my group’s concerns clearly and persistently.”
Britta Haßelmann is someone who actually doesn’t tend to make too much of a fuss about herself. For parliamentary operations and the not always easy role of the smallest opposition party, the Greens, it has played an important role in recent years. Perhaps it could best be compared with that of a machinist, the person who knows the mechanics of the Bundestag down to the last screw and knows how to use them. “Once you’ve got through that, you know how to use it sensibly,” says Haßelmann. That she also likes to rhetorically like to pull hard in parliament, she proved in 2018 when she attacked the AfD in the Bundestag.
Shortly before, at the Jamaica explorations, well-meaning party friends had spread that Haßelmann had made coffee in such a caring way. That was meant nicely, but it “pissed her off”. Nevertheless, Britta Haßelmann is one of the balancing elements among the Greens – and the kind of person who does not seem to scare off any personal oddity.
“I have a relatively relaxed relationship with what is supposedly normal”
From Haßelmann’s office in the Bundestag you can look far over the Berlin zoo, but occasionally she just watches the currywurst stall across the street. The now 59-year-old, born in the Lower Rhine region, is the daughter of employees and the first in her family to graduate from high school. Because she was interested in people, especially the less privileged, she studied social work and for many years looked after people who got off track due to mental health problems or who never got there. That helps, also in the Bundestag, she thinks. “I have a relatively relaxed relationship with what is supposedly normal.” You know life “in all its diversity”.
But Haßelmann also knows his own shop well enough to know that the role of parliamentary group chairman has not become any easier. Because, unlike under the long-term incumbents Katrin Göring-Eckardt and Anton Hofreiter, who are both no longer running, it is no longer necessary to hold together a small bunch of green MPs who are opposed to the government in the coming legislature. The parliamentary group is now bigger, more diverse, also younger – many come to the Bundestag with idealism and high expectations, for example when it comes to climate protection. And the party rules now. Disillusionment and disappointment are certain.
Let’s see, says Britta Haßelmann in response to such questions. The fact that with Annalena Baerbock, Robert Habeck, Cem Özdemir and Steffi Lemke suddenly four Greens with ministerial rank are sitting in the Bundestag should create new areas of friction. Others, such as Anton Hofreiter, were left empty-handed when it came to the distribution of posts, which is causing annoyance on the left wing of the party. “Of course I know: HR decisions can also lead to injuries,” she says. It sounds as if Britta Haßelmann’s next job could also be that of a comforter, again.