Trustworthy, intense, serious, together - these are the adjectives that party leaders and general secretaries use after their talks on forming a government in Berlin. The leaders of the Greens, FDP and SPD have been meeting for a week and a half to discuss the content and form of a future joint government. The FDP categorized the process most carefully. First preliminary soundings with the Greens, then interim soundings with the Greens and the SPD and next week probably the main sounding out with the two other parties, which will then be followed by multi-stage coalition negotiations.

What sounds so cumbersome is carefully formulated: The Free Democrats are under the impression that they have to explain to their supporters as thoroughly as possible why they are embarking on a road-light coalition.

The FDP has the longest way to go, is the understanding comment of the Greens.

And in fact, the first thing the three future government partners have in common is the surprise that until a few weeks ago none of the three seriously expected to be part of the coalition constellation that now needs to be made the best of.

It's all a question of the imagination

The second shared experience is that all three were already involved in attempts to form a government four years ago, all of them were in the role of smaller partners at the time and all of them remember the negotiation process as traumatic: the Free Democrats broke the probes after four weeks , The Greens saw themselves cheated out of their seats at the cabinet table, the SPD had to step in as a second-choice government partner, which almost tore the party apart.

New versus old - the negotiators of the three parties will want to maintain this pair of opposites for as long as possible.

This will become more and more difficult the more it is about content.

Instead of tax hikes or new debts, are there other ways of financing to cover the expenditure that Greens want to make for the climate and social democrats for social causes?

Reduction of subsidies, perhaps?

It remains easier for everyone involved to meet the expectations and disappointments of their members and supporters on the grounds that new paths must now be broken.

Above all, the SPD and the Greens offer an opportunity to ignore the classic left-right signposts.

Since its parliamentary rebirth in the federal government four years ago, the FDP has insisted on its novelty anyway.

The unconventional vow of silence that the negotiating partners have imposed on themselves and which they have made, as it were, as evidence of their new common ground, also provides a first opportunity to test their seriousness.

If this form can be maintained over the next few weeks and the existing contradictions can be resolved, then there is some evidence that the result will endure.

Only the imagination is new, but Schiller once thought.

So far, only FDP chairman Christian Lindner has used this word from the coalition negotiators.