She grew up near the Leuna-Buna-Bitterfeld chemical triangle. She fought against toxins in rivers as early as the 1980s. Environment Minister Steffi Lemke and her first major case of action in office.
It is quite possible that the environmental catastrophe on the Oder seems like a déjà vu. Poisoned rivers, dead fish – she knows it. It was precisely because of such things that she became politically active, back in the 1980s in East Germany, when it still took courage to get involved. Of course it was about freedom of expression and democracy, but she was always concerned about protecting nature. One can confidently say that Steffi Lemke was a Green long before the Greens even existed in the East, before she herself became a co-founder of the party in ’89, Green Member of the Bundestag, then Federal Secretary, Parliamentary Secretary and now, three decades later, even Federal Minister for the Environment .