German Politics and Society

This introductory article examines the political landscape of 2025 with respect to Germany's image as a leader on climate action with a long history of grassroots activism. It begins by describing the climate crisis and the crisis of democracy as deeply interconnected. Assessing the level of attention that climate change has received within u.s.-based German Studies, the article highlights the diverse underpinnings of German climate action and activism as both political and cultural phenomena. The authors conclude with a brief case study of recent developments in German energy cultures in general and nuclear power in particular, highlighting the important role of grassroots activism.

The anti-nuclear protests of the 1970s in Wyhl, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, marked the emergence of citizens’ involvement in environmental movements and served as a catalyst in the search for alternative energy sources (Energiewende). This article introduces two recently published novels that are based on the experiences and memories of activists: Hans Weide's Rote Sonne—Dunkler Herbst and Julia Heinecke's Kalter Nebel. The novels tell the stories of ordinary citizens compelled to become activists in defense of their local environment and their families’ futures. They find themselves embroiled in a political and existential struggle that divides families, neighbors, and the community. This article examines how these fictional narratives enhance our understanding of the pivotal socio-political changes sparked by the Wyhl movement.

Germany was an early leader in the energy transition. In contrast to the country's general top-down policymaking style, the Energiewende proceeded from the bottom up, through the activism of small innovators and local communities. The 2000 Renewable Energy Sources Act supported the local transition primarily through feed-in tariffs. The locally based Energiewende yielded diverse benefits, including climate resilience, economic vitality, and community efficacy. Technological challenges, however, combined with pressure from incumbent utilities, led the German government to shift back toward a more centralized model. As community ownership stalled, local opposition to facilities imposed from outside grew, slowing the transition and diminishing its legitimacy. After 2021, the traffic light coalition moved to restore the diversity of participants by incentivizing those forms of renewable energy favored by citizen energy organizations. This is a hopeful sign that the people-powered energy transition is still within reach, so long as these incentives remain in place.

The Rhenish Lignite Mining area has been a focal point of climate conflict in Germany in recent years, featuring large-scale protests by the climate movement. This article investigates, first, the conditions of social reproduction necessary for local citizens to become involved in environmental activism and, second, the role of care work in fostering and sustaining regional coalitions against coal mining. It draws on four problem-centered interviews with care working residents from two villages once designated for excavation due to lignite mining. The findings suggest that the social and ecological impacts of open-cast mining result in a precarization and politicization of the interviewees’ daily care work. Efforts to preserve local social reproduction thus contribute to fostering regional protest against lignite extraction. Everyday practices in the field of social reproduction strengthen alliances between interviewees and the climate movement while care serves as a shared vision of both groups.

This article examines two case studies of bicycle-based initiatives that offer environmental benefits: Munich's Radlhauptstadt (“Bicycle Capital”) campaign and Berlin's gig-based bicycle delivery industry. While both can be understood as forms of climate action, the article shows how they fall short of promoting the systemic transformations necessary for truly sustainable and equitable mobility. Drawing on scholarship in mobility justice and infrastructure studies, the authors argue that both examples can be understood as “greenwishing,” which leverages minor environmental benefits for public relations purposes. The study further illustrates that grassroots activism and governmental action together can work synergistically to achieve systemic change—as practice and process—that benefits all participants in urban landscapes.

Global agro-industrial agriculture involves severe challenges, from environmental degradation to food insecurity, even in socially and economically developed countries. With growing urban populations, cities are critical for climate action through mitigation and adaptation measures initiated by civil society and governments. This research investigates the local climate action of urban agriculture in German cities through case studies in Andernach, Berlin, and Kassel. The focus is on understanding its functions, structures, and direct and indirect contributions to climate change mitigation and adaptation. The findings highlight the role of a diverse urban agriculture that is rooted in agroecology to integrate social, economic, and environmental dimensions by fostering civic participation, creating local income opportunities, improving urban microclimates, enhancing biodiversity, and advancing climate resilience. This is relevant to showcase urban agriculture as an integrative local climate action model that offers valuable insights for policy development.

The article looks at the first national climate assembly in Germany, the so-called Bürgerrat Klima—as a discursive event. Based on qualitative analysis of publicly available data, the author traces how organizers, participants, and external observers comment on this pioneering democratic endeavor. The analysis focuses on three debates: the utility of the citizen assembly, its procedural best practices, and the criteria for its effectiveness. With an eye toward competing and complementary frames, values, and identities, the author investigates the discourse around the Bürgerrat as a site where the climate crisis and the appropriate responses to it were—and still are—socially negotiated. Ultimately, the article argues for the versatility of discourse-analytical perspectives on citizen assemblies in general. As they evolve qua political practice, the author recommends the need for concomitant sensitivity regarding their linguistic mediation.

Germany's cultures of climate action co-exist and contend with efforts to promote climate denial and delay. Such efforts usually originate with those who expect to see their profits shrink in a low-carbon world. The second Trump administration's open attacks on climate science and decarbonization efforts represent the most glaring form of climate denial and obstruction. This article takes a broader view to show that climate denial and delay have a well-established transatlantic history. It then zooms in on the evolution of climate denial in the federal election platforms of the German far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) between its founding in 2013 and the federal election in 2025, and how this evolution parallels developments in the u.s. The authors conclude with an overview of German efforts to effectively counter climate delay and denial.

While the term “radical” is frequently used in the context of activism, it often lacks a clear definition and tends to be equated with violence. A more nuanced analysis suggests that this association is not inherently central to social movement practices. I argue that radical climate activism presents a distinct form of political protest—one that transcends traditional civil disobedience without amounting to eco-terrorism. Radical activism provides a compelling framework for understanding contemporary climate justice movements in Germany, both in terms of their demands and strategies. This analysis is relevant given that, despite their prominence and role in the climate crisis, the conceptual underpinnings of radicalism in these movements remain largely under-theorized—an analytical gap I seek to address through the lens of political theory.

This article examines the language and arguments of contemporary German climate activism. Looking at the last decade, it considers new linguistic and artistic registers concomitant with the street protests of Germany's Fridays for Future movement, German Extinction Rebellion activism (closely connected with Die Letzte Generation, renamed Neue Generation in 2025), and the climate justice collective ausgeCO2hlt. In close readings of representative publications from these groups, the article identifies key influences that have contributed to shaping the contemporary language, concepts, and creative expressions of German climate discourse and activism. Earlier intellectual traditions, which these groups transform and which they reinscribe, strongly engage with older utopian language and concepts that serve as analytical as well as descriptive categories—as method as much as destination.

Luisa Neubauer, co-founder of the German Fridays for Future youth climate movement, is one of the most prominent faces of German climate activism. A regular guest on talk shows and public panel discussions, at only 30 years of age Neubauer is also a highly successful social media influencer and best-selling author. In September 2024 she traveled to the United States for the first time, visiting university and college campuses on the East Coast, in Minnesota, and in the South. Helena Marschall, a co-creator of Fridays for Future Germany, joined Luisa for the second half of the “Democracy and Climate” tour. During her stay, Luisa was able to get to know u.s. campus life from the inside. Engaging with young people in high schools, colleges, universities, and beyond, Neubauer shared lessons from her five years of climate activism in Germany. In a weekly column published in the German daily newspaper taz, Neubauer provided a travel diary reflecting on international climate action, democracy, and the perception of Germany from abroad.