Heroes

His role is unlike that of any other federal politician. His career has developed very differently from that of his fellow policymakers. Having started out as a self-taught politician, he succeeded in moving to the very top of government following a highly circuitous route. He still enjoys exceptional public popularity, and was his party's Machtpolitik engine for more than two decades.

“Force - the liberating force of the people fighting latent and/or overt oppression - is the primary matter that modern democracies use to build legitimacy and preserve by means of custom and tradition.” (Joschka Fischer, Risiko Deutschland, 1994)

„We - the Social Democrats and the Greens and with us, the 68ers - had arrived at the nucleus of Germany’s political power, the Federal Government, the Chancellor’s Office, the Federal Ministries. For four years we would govern our country. Was this an opportunity or a burden?“ (Joschka Fischer, Die rot-grünen Jahre, 2007)

From social outcast to Foreign Minister

On balance, Joschka Fischer’s political career is a one-of-a-kind social cross-over, the likes of which have never before been seen in Germany. Once a social outcast, he rose to become Germany’s Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs. His journey from the margins of society to the very pinnacle of government power requires at least as much explanation as the existence of photographs that depict a masked protester who joins in beating up a police officer and that are difficult to reconcile with the image of a minister. This career, presumably an impossibility in prior decades, throws up several questions that have not even been asked, let alone answered.

Yet Fischer is neither a split personality nor a masked figure whose true characteristics remain a matter of mystery. He is a man of many diverse qualities that, while potentially very contradictory, also complement each other. He embodies two very different sides to German history. One the one hand, he represents a highly critical force, a clear break with the National Socialist generation, an attack on the state and a rejection of parliamentarianism. On the other, he embodies the vitality of the parliamentary system, the integrative power of the party state, and the reestablishment of the legitimacy of the constitutional state. Some three decades lie between these two extremes. They include years of reckoning, fights and conflicts, but also years of change, moderation and reconciliation.

In an interview with Deutschlandfunk on November 18, 2005 Fischer said, “A democracy needs these conflicts. In a democracy, they can be both fair and unfair. That is part of the deal, and I am not entitled to complain or whine about it. I’ve dealt a few hard blows, I still do. Accordingly, I have to accept the hard blows from others, and I’d say that is what I do.”

Reconciling the generations

Unlike almost any other, Fischer embodies both tendencies in the extreme. The protester of days gone by has become reconciliation and integration personified. Precisely this has earned him the hatred of some of his former companions. Those who strived for disintegration, anti-statehood and confrontation have done everything they could to expose, embarrass and derail him. Then again, that appears to be what makes him so intriguing. Fischer's personality unites and simultaneously revokes the generational conflict. The attempt to pin down his militantly anti-statehood phase as the “real Fischer” discredits the integrative role he and others of his generation played. If he really was the only one who, as a journalist once wrote, managed to complete “the long march up the institutional ranks”, then he represents more than just one person’s change in attitude - he also stands for the reconciliation between the generations, between the government and the protest movement, and between social groups and movements.

It is for this reason that Fischer’s exceptional career needs to be de-personalised. The milestones of his political development must be seen in a historical context - the ’68 movement, the anti-authoritarian revolt, the anarchist “Sponti-Szene” with its erstwhile leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the Frankfurt squatter scene, the renunciation of the terrorist RAF, the disillusionment with utopian dreams and the establishment of the Realpolitik wing in the Green party. This political, social and cultural background lends his personality the necessary sharpness and profile.

Those who have been surprised to suddenly recognise “a baggy leather jacket under the Minister's made-to-measure suit" are advised to consider the line that took Fischer from social outcast and street fighter to federal minister and top diplomat. That line was a learning curve for which no one, not even the now retired Fischer himself, has yet found words to describe.

“I was one of the last live rock 'n rollers of German politics,” Fischer said of himself upon his sudden departure from politics in the autumn of 2005.

Fischer in Frankfurt
Karriere eines Außenseiters
Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2001
ISBN 3930908697,
Gebunden, 255 Seiten, 18,41 EUR