Some sentences in politics have a long resonance. “Excuse me, I am not convinced,” said an excited Joschka Fischer to Donald Rumsfeld at the Munich Security Conference in February 2003. The question is whether war is the only remedy against Iraq, which is said to have chemical weapons, and its dictator Saddam Hussein. The US Secretary of Defense is pressing, but the German Foreign Minister is not convinced (“not convinced”) and considers diplomacy to be “by no means exhausted”.
This argument about war and peace in the Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Munich is a kind of key scene in the political life of Joschka Fischer, who turns 75 this Wednesday. He experienced something else in May 1999 at the special party conference of the Greens in Bielefeld on the Kosovo war. Here Fischer is on the side of those who advocate the use of weapons, i.e. military intervention by NATO with the participation of the Bundeswehr.
This position is highly controversial in his pacifist-oriented party. One of the numerous opponents hurls a paint bag at the Foreign Minister and hits him in the right ear. Not only was Fischer spattered with red paint, he also suffered a ruptured eardrum. The pictures from the 1999 party conference are still present today – as is the sentence from the 2003 security conference.
Further away
By then, Fischer had come a long way. He was born on April 12, 1948 in Gerabronn in Baden-Württemberg, the son of a butcher. He left high school in the 10th grade without a degree, and he gave up his apprenticeship as a photographer. From 1967 Fischer became active in the student movement and in the extra-parliamentary opposition (APO), and moved to Frankfurt/Main. There he attended lectures by left-wing pioneers such as Theodor Adorno, Jürgen Habermas and Oskar Negt as a guest auditor at the university. Fischer earns his living with odd jobs, later as a taxi driver.
During these turbulent years of the Republic, he founded the militant group Revolutionary Struggle with Daniel Cohn-Bendit, and also took part in street fights and squatting. “I also got there once,” Fischer later confessed. In 2001, photos from his street fight days caught up with him and he had to explain himself.
But the RAF terrorism makes the Sponti rethink. In 1982 Fischer joined the Green Party. Just one year later, Realo was elected to the Bundestag. He was only a member of the first Greens parliamentary group for two years – the rotation rules are still strict.
But the next task is already waiting. In Hesse, the SPD and the Greens form Germany’s first red-green coalition in 1985. Fischer becomes Germany’s first Green Minister, responsible for the environment and energy. In jeans and white sneakers, he was sworn in in the state parliament – another picture with an eternity character. The coalition breaks up in 1987, but experiences a new one in 1991, again with Fischer as Minister for the Environment. In 1994 he moved back to the Bundestag.
And then Secretary of State
His hour of glory came in 1998 with the red-green victory in the Bundestag elections. Chancellor Schröder appoints Fischer foreign minister and vice chancellor, a position he remains on until the red-green coalition fails in the 2005 federal elections. He didn’t make it easy for his own party, especially its left wing, during this time. But when Fischer gave up his seat in the Bundestag in 2006 and withdrew from politics, the Greens lost their longstanding leader, a brilliant mind and an excellent speaker.
Fischer is just as versatile in his private life as he is in politics. Five marriages bear witness to this, as does the fight against obesity. He brought his 112 kilos down in the summer of 1996 to 75 kilos in just over a year through intensive jogging. Even with the many trips abroad, the sport does not fall flat – the running route sometimes leads around the pyramids of Gizeh.
There is no return to politics. Fischer takes on a guest professorship at Princeton University, founds a consulting firm, gives lectures and writes books and guest articles for newspapers. In 2011, he took up his contribution to the Munich Security Conference in the title of a book: “I am not convinced”.
