You don't actually need a hall for a digital party conference. In the hall of the Heidenheim Congress Center there are no delegates, only a few technicians, the conference presidium and the outgoing regional chairmen who are up for election. At least 73-year-old Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann can be relied on in these times: when he comes to the convention center, he rummages through a Reclam ribbon by Hannah Arendt from his briefcase - this is important to him because he is reading it in the 22nd month of the pandemic Hold, as he says. He is concerned with the question of what will become of democracy when more and more citizens form opinions on the basis of fake news, some radicalize themselves and even organize torchlight marches. Kretschmann discovered passages in the text in Plato and Arendt. He believethe phenomenon will not go away after the pandemic.

Rudiger Soldt

Political correspondent in Baden-Württemberg.

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A debate was expected for the party congress on how the Greens want to regulate the successor to Kretschmann: whether the party, parliamentary group or members should determine the procedure - or whether one wants to go to the state elections in 2026 without, as recently Angela Merkel, To have chosen a successor in good time.

Lena Schwelling had sparked the discussion before the party congress: the “central task” of her term of office with co-chair Pascal Haggenmüller would be the free choice of a top candidate for 2026.

This process will begin this year.

The district associations and also the members of parliament are concerned with this question.

Green youth increases influence

In Heidenheim, the green patriarch ends the debate abruptly: If his health allows, he will continue to govern until 2026. He had given the citizens the promise not to retire "for hiking" until he had fulfilled his obligations, namely to promote climate protection and to successfully end the legislative period.

Neither 33-year-old Haggenmüller nor 29-year-old Schwelling address the question of succession in their application speeches. After their election, they justify their reluctance to say that the Greens have "the luxury" of being able to take their time with this question. The party-left Haggenmüller is elected state chairman with 89.5 percent, the Reala Schwelling receives 77.8 percent. Their result at this party congress is worse because the party left in the south-west currently understand better how to organize majorities. In the new party council - the expanded state executive - the influence of a younger generation of politicians, shaped by the Green Youth, is growing.

Unlike in 2019, this time the parliamentary group chairman and possible Kretschmann successor Andreas Schwarz makes it into the party council. Three years ago, the delegates failed him, damaging the second most important green politician in the country. The European State Secretary and Kretschmann confidante Florian Hassler, like Schwarz an Ober-Realo, did not make it into the party council. This means that the seventeen-member committee that almost prevented the formation of the second green-black coalition should continue to be a place of left-wing opposition for Kretschmann.

Almost all of the speeches made by the delegates and candidates who were switched on via video use the words “handicrafts” and “rural areas”.

The Greens know that they will only remain strong in the long term if they are more than an urban academics party.

The Greens are also concerned with one topic at the party congress marked by the pandemic: Through Kretschmann's campaign for a general vaccination requirement, anthroposophically oriented members of the party are bitterly showing the unvaccinated shoulder.