He is an old Green Party warrior: Jürgen Trittin. In a completely surprising move, he announced that he would be resigning from his Bundestag mandate after 25 years. He was never squeamish when dealing with political opponents.
It was pointed, provocative and polarizing: With Jürgen Trittin’s withdrawal from politics, the Greens are losing one of their most prominent fighters for environmental and climate protection, for human rights, disarmament and against nuclear energy. He was often unpopular and never avoided controversy – but he was also considered successful.
“The Trittin is a tough guy,” said the business side, which the Green Party leader liked to take on. Especially in the dispute over can deposits, the then Federal Environment Minister was able to annoy his opponents with his stubbornness. The one-way deposit, introduced at the beginning of 2003, will probably remain associated with his name forever.
Trittin, born in Bremen in 1954, studied social sciences in Göttingen. He remained connected to the city in the south of Lower Saxony to this day. Trittin has represented the Göttingen constituency in the Bundestag since 1998. He joined the Greens in 1980. Five years later he entered the Lower Saxony state parliament, where he was temporarily leader of the parliamentary group.
Trittin gained his first government experience from 1990 to 1994 as Lower Saxony’s Minister for Federal and European Affairs in the cabinet of then Prime Minister Gerhard Schröder (SPD).
Don’t be afraid of confrontation
When Schröder won the federal election for the SPD in 1998, Trittin was the first choice as Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. He remained in this post until the early federal election in 2005, which sealed the end of the red-green coalition in the federal government. Trittin was a convinced red-green party, but he also caused offense within the coalition – be it with the deposit requirement, with wind energy, which was an even more hot topic at the time than it is today, with the nuclear phase-out, with eco-taxes or with emissions trading.
During his first term in office until 2002, Trittin had a warm personal relationship with the then Economics Minister Werner Müller (SPD), despite all the conflicting interests. This was no longer the case with his successor Wolfgang Clement (SPD).
One of his provocations, for example, was that in the spring of 2001 he described the then CDU general secretary Laurenz Meyer as having “the mentality of a skinhead.” Three years later, CSU regional group leader Michael Glos retaliated by calling Trittin an “eco-Stalinist.” He was alluding to the minister’s left-wing past. Trittin had long since moved from the fundamentalist wing of the Greens to the Realpolitik camp.
From 2009 to 2013 he headed the Green Party parliamentary group. He later switched from environmental to foreign policy, was a member of the Bundestag’s Foreign Affairs Committee from 2017 to 2021 and was most recently foreign policy spokesman for his parliamentary group. During the Ukrainian war, he was earlier than others in favor of tank deliveries to the country invaded by Russia.
The 69-year-old also remained uncomfortable in the traffic light coalition made up of the SPD, Greens and FDP. When the operating times of the last three German nuclear power plants were extended by a few months last year due to the uncertain energy supply, Trittin voted against it in the Bundestag. And he called plans by his party colleague Robert Habeck for an industrial electricity price “nonsense”.
