The Frankfurt Greens are always good for a surprise: At the online general meeting on Saturday, the majority of the base voted for Julia and Daniel Frank as the new speaker duo of their party in the first ballot and thus voted for two new members who were previously did not hold any party offices. The two established candidates, Miriam Dahlke, Member of the State Parliament and City Councilor Christoph Rosenbaum, both of whom have been members of the party executive for two years, were subject to them. In the run-up to the meeting, the applications from Dahlke and Rosenbaum had been considered more promising, at least in the area of ​​the Greens in the Römer. Julia and Daniel Frank, who happen to have the same family name but are not related to each other, are succeeded by Bastian Bergerhoff and Beatrix Baumann in their new office,both of which were no longer candidates.

Old speaker duo did not run

Mechthild Harting

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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    Bergerhoff and Baumann played a key role in forging the new coalition in the Römer, the alliance of the Greens, SPD, FDP and Volt.

    The coalition agreement was negotiated under her leadership.

    Bergerhoff is designated treasurer of the new city government and has therefore given up the party chairmanship after ten years;

    the 65-year-old Baumann wants to dedicate herself exclusively to her mandate as city councilor in the future.

    The reason for the decision of the Greens base to choose Julia and Daniel Frank as the new spokesman may have been the close proximity of Dahlke and Rosenbaum to the leadership circle of the Greens in the Römer.

    The party-internal dispute over the personnel board for the future Green City Council posts may have played a role.

    At the end of May, the party executive committee and negotiating committee first submitted a proposal for a vote to the general assembly, according to which three men and two women would have filled the five departmental posts.

    Such a procedure contradicts the women's statute of the Green Party.

    Internal party dispute

    The party's management level then followed suit and last Monday presented a new personnel table, this time with three women and two men. These are now Bergerhoff and the already incumbent city councilor Stefan Majer, as well as the longtime environment officer Rosemarie Heilig, the former honorary integration officer Nargess Eskandari-Grünberg and Elke Voitl, previously Stefan Majer's office manager. She is supposed to be the new head of social affairs. However, city councilor Natascha Kauder also applied for the post, an application that became public. This further fueled the conflict between the grassroots, which accused the leadership circle of the Greens for non-transparent action, and the established ones in the Romans.

    At the general meeting, almost all applicants for the post of two party spokesmen responded to this recruitment. "We are no longer allowed to make nominations for the city council post like this," said 32-year-old Miriam Dahlke. In the future, the party will need “standards, clear processes” for this. And when asked why, as the party executive, she had not insisted on maintaining women's status, she replied that, as an assessor, she had only been informed about the outcome of the negotiations. "But the result was already in the newspaper," she said. But she was "very, very happy" that the women’s statute is now being complied with with the planned occupation.

    The 46-year-old Julia Frank, concert manager at the Frankfurt organizer Wizard Promotions, has been a city councilor since April and also chairwoman of the Frankfurt City Parents' Council. In her application, she said that when she joined the Greens in 2018, she naively assumed that “the Greens are one and one”, that there are no wings. Now she knows that it is different. She sees it as her task to involve the ever-growing base - the Greens now have around 1,700 members in Frankfurt, 75 have entered since Annalena Baerbock was candidate for chancellor - and to listen to the most varied of positions with "empathy and mindfulness" and after mutual agreement To seek solutions. And with a view to the conflicts, Julia Frank said: She wanted to "be a link,unite and bring everyone together ”. The Greens didn't want to show where the opposites are, but rather "what we share in terms of positions".

    The 37-year-old Daniel Frank, who has a doctorate in chemistry, works in water management and has been a member of the Greens since 2019, demanded that the filling of city council positions must be “up to date” in future: ability and knowledge must be prerequisites, not party offices. In his opinion, one cannot be both a party executive and a member of the city parliament. Especially now, when the Greens are the main engine of the city government, “externally, too, there is a need for a strong management board that is independent of the Romans and that drives new ideas forward, but at the same time gives the parliamentary group the necessary support”.