When Germany's Green Party first entered parliament 25 years ago, few imagined that the protest party -- with its penchant for beards, dungarees and sunflowers -- would one day become a sought-after ally for conservatives.
On Thursday night, though, Greens in Hamburg voted to launch talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), on what would be their first state-level coalition. If successful, that tie-up could help set the scene for a national alliance.
The decision came two days after party leaders marked the anniversary of their arrival in the national parliament with organic wine and donning respectable suits -- reflecting a long journey to the political center for one of the continent's most successful ecology-based parties.
Today's Greens are a far cry from the 28 lawmakers who took their seats in Bonn in 1983 -- after marching through the West German capital with a tree felled to make way for an airport runway and a dead fir from the Black Forest.
"Back then, no one could have imagined our working together with the CDU," Renate Kuenast, the party's co-leader in parliament, said this week.
Now, she said, the Greens should be prepared to cooperate with conservatives "if they're intent on improving society."
"But they should understand that even though we no longer have the same clothes and beards ... we still have the same political visions," she said.
With Germany's coalitions in flux, trying out an alliance with the CDU could free the Greens from relying on their usual partnership with the center-left Social Democrats, the struggling party of former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, with whom they governed Germany for seven years. And such an alliance could expand Merkel's options in the future.
On Thursday, Hamburg Greens endorsed the idea after lawmaker Krista Sager urged them to seize the opportunity.
"This is a historic chance now and we must try to get as much as possible out of this chance for people in our city," she said.
Still, these are insecure times for the party, which has struggled for direction since Schroeder's government lost power in 2005 and their de facto leader, former foreign minister Joschka Fischer, went into retirement.
Its current leaders will have to be careful about embracing new partners, given the risk of alienating grass-roots members who are often left-leaning and pacifist.
Earlier this week, top Greens decided to go into next year's national election with a leadership duo that reflects those tensions -- pairing Kuenast, a pragmatist who was Schroeder's agriculture minister, with Juergen Trittin, a former environment minister who is closer to the party's left wing.
Trittin and others have suggested the party could work with the new Left party -- a combination of former East German communists and former Social Democrats disgruntled by economic reform that has drained votes from the center-left and complicated efforts to build a coalition since it emerged in 2005.
In Hamburg, some Greens suggest speculation about a possible coalition with the CDU ahead of last month's state election contributed to a relatively poor vote tally for the party in a traditional stronghold. But they see opportunities too.
"We Greens have arrived in the middle of society and it's time to position ourselves anew," said Helmut Deecke, the party's treasurer in Hamburg.
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