The Greens did not advance the security policy change of the traffic light coalition, which Chancellor Scholz carried out last Sunday in the Bundestag in the form of a government declaration, but they are happy to reap the benefits a few days later.
The drama of the worldwide crisis meetings and the coincidence of appointment calendars meant that the Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and the Green Economics Minister Robert Habeck were out and about in America a few days after the "turn of the era" proclaimed by Scholz.
Baerbock appeared at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where the world's states debated condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine;
Habeck made inaugural visits to Washington and also met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Johannes Leithauser
Political correspondent in Berlin.
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And while Baerbock made a very personal commitment to the new standards of German foreign policy at the United Nations, Habeck drew a general conclusion about Germany's about-face: "The transatlantic partnership is experiencing something of a new renaissance," he said on Deutschlandfunk.
Baerbock, on the other hand, first recalled the self-forgotten German post-war happiness that also shaped her youth: "I stand before you as my country's foreign minister," she said in the plenary session of the United Nations, "but I am also a German who had the immense privilege to grow up in peace and security".
"Pragmatism has to beat every political decision"
Putin has attacked this stable order, Baerbock continued, he has created a new reality "that requires each of us to make a decisive decision and choose a side".
That is why Germany has now decided to support Ukraine militarily.
The German foreign minister began her UN address by mentioning a baby that had been born in a Kiev subway shaft a few days ago;
it also ended personally fated.
After the vote in the General Assembly - in which not only Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea refused their announcements after a condemnation of Russia - every delegate, "all of us", had to look the children, partners, friends in the eye at home and justify voting behavior.
And unlike the foreign minister, who appealed to personal morality as a common link, Habeck took the big picture and identified a new transatlantic unity in political interests.
Germany is "perceived as a strong partner" in Washington, said the Economics Minister happily, stating that it would be good "to follow common paths, to find common solutions and not to stalk each other or to act out of economic and trade distrust".
His talks with the departmental colleagues from Economics, Finance and Energy in Washington were characterized "by the search for common actions, a common position, but also for a common policy beyond this war in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia".
The economics minister and former leader of the Greens gave another indication of the current programmatic flexibility of his party.
To ensure security of energy supply, coal-fired power plants might also have to be kept in reserve, he announced, and underlined this with the statement: "Pragmatism must beat any political determination".