Robert Habeck's worry lines are hard to miss.
On Tuesday, the economics and climate protection minister again stood in front of the blue wall in his ministry to comment on the consequences of the Ukraine war.
It doesn't matter that the day in Berlin is a public holiday.
The employees at his company have been working at absolute "full capacity" for weeks," Habeck replied when asked when which draft law would be ready.
The look on his face suggested that this also applies to himself.
Christian Geinitz
Business correspondent in Berlin
Follow I follow
Julia Loehr
Business correspondent in Berlin.
Follow I follow
After the change of government, it took a while for the new name of the ministry on Berlin's Invalidenstraße to find its way.
Economy and climate protection instead of economy and energy - for outsiders this may not make a big difference, for Habeck and his party it was enormously important.
Climate protection should no longer be something that a ministry does on the side, the expansion of wind and solar energy should have top priority.
But since the beginning of the war, Habeck has had to talk a lot about fossil fuels again.
Why Germany needs two terminals for liquid gas, for example.
And also why he doesn't want to stop energy imports from Russia for the time being.
Otherwise there is a risk of "severe social damage," Habeck warned on Tuesday.
On Wednesday evening he then promised on ZDF:
“We will quickly free ourselves from the bracket of Russian imports.
But we're not there yet."
Between the chairs
The Green Economics Minister is sitting between the chairs in a similar way as the Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer once did.
Ironically, when the peace party was in government under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) in 1999, the first combat mission of the Bundeswehr after the Second World War became necessary in the Kosovo war.
In view of the serious violations of human rights there, Fischer justified the military strike as follows: “We always said: never again war!
But we also always said: never again Auschwitz!”
Habeck had to weigh green convictions in a similar way when he agreed to arms deliveries to the Ukraine – in the middle of a war zone – and the billions in payments to upgrade the German armed forces.
The announcement that the lifetime extension of the remaining nuclear reactors would be examined and the willingness to delay the shutdown process for the coal-fired power plants was also ideologically painful for him.
These mind games became necessary because of Germany's dependence on Russia.
More than half of our gas imports and a good third of our coal imports come from the country.
That's why even domestic lignite is being discussed again, although it emits a particularly large amount of carbon dioxide and is the least favorite of green climate protectors.
Habeck and his party have long warned against unilateral supplies from Russia and have therefore rejected the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
However, this attitude became incongruent at the latest in the coalition agreement, which envisages the construction of new gas-fired power plants as a transitional technique until complete green electricity generation - which of course should have been supplied from Russian sources.