The success of the Greens in the North Rhine-Westphalian state elections has a face: Mona Neubaur.

With the Neubauer born in 1977 in Pöttmes, Bavaria, the largest Greens state association achieved its best result so far on Sunday.

According to the first forecasts on Sunday evening, the party came to a good 18 percent.

The comparison makes it clear how big the triumph is: Five years ago it was only 6.4 percent.

It was also a good part of Neubauer's personal defeat, after all she had already been at the head of the party for three years.

Pure burger

Political correspondent in North Rhine-Westphalia.

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Since then, the head of state has worked intensively to ensure that the Greens "get out of their comfort zone", as she puts it, so that the party also comes into contact with their critics and skeptics.

For himself, Neubaur focused on economic policy and systematically expanded her long-standing intensive contacts with industry, trade and trade unions – with tangible success.

Until a few years ago, the Green Party in North Rhine-Westphalia was considered an economic scare, but today managers like Evonik boss Christian Kullmann publicly wish that Neubaur should play a similarly strong role in the next state government as did Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck in Berlin.

It is almost certain that this will happen now.

Because apart from a grand coalition, no government can be formed without the Greens in Düsseldorf.

Neubaur grew up in rural, sheltered conditions.

"In my childhood I thought I was Ronja the robber's daughter," she says.

Her mother was a nurse and her father was a master blacksmith who taught his craft to young offenders in a prison.

A first big step for Neubaur was moving to high school.

As the best of her elementary school, she was recommended for the music St. Bonaventura Gymnasium in Dillingen an der Donau.

"Each day alone 80 kilometers by train." After graduating from high school, Neubaur made a conscious decision to go to North Rhine-Westphalia.

"I wanted to go where a lot of people live in a small space." She studied educational science, sociology and psychology at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf and also worked at a green electricity provider.

When she had her pedagogical diploma in her pocket in 2003,

she started there in the marketing department.

Four years later, Neubaur moved to the Heinrich Böll Foundation, close to the Greens, where she was promoted to state management in 2010.

In mid-December, the Greens chose Neubaur as the top candidate for the state elections.

She and her party made a conscious decision to leave it at that.

The fact that Neubaur did not claim to become prime minister was also due to the fact that she had not yet been able to gain any government experience, nor had she ever been a member of parliament.