Four years ago, almost exactly to the day, Cem Özdemir gave an interview.

At that time it was already about the green concepts for climate protection, but the essential question for the top candidate for the federal election at the time was a different one: have the Greens become superfluous as a party?

The green founding generation had largely ceded, and all parties were concerned with the environment.

Who should grow back there?

Helene Bubrowski

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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    Rudiger Soldt

    Political correspondent in Baden-Württemberg.

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      Today the question seems strange.

      Young people run to the Greens like no other party.

      Before the 2017 federal election, the Greens had a good 60,000 members; today there are almost twice as many.

      In some district associations, the new Greens are in the majority.

      A big boost came recently from the climate movement Fridays for Future.

      Nothing better could have happened to the party.

      But at the same time the young new members are a challenge.

      The late millennials are said to have considerable self-esteem, and indeed Green Party officials can tell you a thing or two about it.

      The young Greens do not respectfully listen to the old camels of knitting actions in the Bundestag, but tell their own stories. You don't just want to stick up posters, you want to be part of the decision-making process. 34 candidates under the age of 28 are on promising list places for the federal election. “We'll still have a lot of fun there,” says a Green man who has been sitting in the Bundestag for a long time and knows the troubles of parliamentary work very well.

      This weekend at the party congress, the two worlds collide: The party leadership, which is currently facing a whole series of problems, wants to adopt an election program with which it can catch votes in the middle of society.

      The young Greens have committed themselves to the fight against climate change and injustice in the world and do not want to make any compromises.

      But how do these young people want to do politics?

      What do you want to achieve?

      And who?

      This is what four young women and men on the threshold of professional politics talk about.

      VASILI FRANCO

      Vasili Franco says that young people have a better view of the big picture. “Because they ask the very banal question: Why?” Franco is 28 years old and sits in a breakfast café on Rigaer Strasse in Berlin-Friedrichshain. Two blocks further is the "Rigaer 94", the occupied house is one of the last symbols of the left-wing extremist scene in Berlin. No, he doesn't live there, affirms Franco and smiles. Nor is he against the system in principle. He wants to belong: He is running for the Berlin House of Representatives, and everything looks like he will be doing politics there from September onwards.

      Nonetheless, Franco directs his “why” question to green party friends and can be quite annoying to them. “It can't be just clapping for the party,” he says. "If you have to, you sometimes have to run your head against the wall, at least to make it shake." He has already achieved a lot with this method, even earlier when he was still living in southern Baden. At the summer festivals of the green district association there was grilled suckling pig. "We have enforced that there will only be vegetarian food."