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Ricarda Lang, Deputy Federal Chairwoman of the Greens: "I didn't go into politics to be insulted and then to talk about it"
Photo:
Jacobia Dahm / DER SPIEGEL
Ricarda Lang is standing at the train station in Waghäusel, Baden-Württemberg, biting into a muffin.
There are people in Germany who are incited by this sentence.
It is the same people who shared a picture of the deputy federal chairman of the Greens sitting with a McDonalds bag on the ICE.
People who text Lang after appearing on TV and insult her, threaten her.
With rape or with death.
Ricarda Lang has already filed criminal charges against some of these people this year, 19 in total.
Lang did not become known in Germany because she is a good speaker, professionally competent or politically talented.
Many in the country know the 27-year-old from the shitstorms that break in and the expressions of solidarity that follow from all sides.
Now Lang wants to be elected to the Bundestag for her constituency Backnang / Schwäbisch Gmünd on September 26th. At the moment, she is only rarely at home in her flat share on Berlin's Herrmannplatz and is often out and about in Germany, heaving the family's large trolley suitcase into trains, trams and taxis. On the suitcase is the address of her grandmother's house in Nürtingen, Lang's home in Baden-Württemberg. Winning the constituency directly is likely to be hopeless for Lang, because the CDU is elected there. But it has a promising place on the state list: number 10.
Shortly before Lang bites into the muffin at the train station, she spoke of her involuntary fame in a campaign speech. Lang spoke to the people over a headset, which seemed a bit exaggerated for the gathering in front of almost 20 people at the Hermitage in Waghäusel. But Lang gestured as if they were filling a stadium.
"I didn't want to deal with it for long," she explains to her audience.
Then she noticed that she was thinking harder about what she was saying.
It is precisely the goal of these people to silence people like them with their comments.
“During this time I was told again and again that it was part of the job, you had to get used to it.
But I don't want to get used to it, ”says Lang.
Then she calls out to those present: "You will never get my resignation, but instead all of our resistance and our courage."
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Lang has made being fat her brand and reinterpreted alleged weakness as strength.
Many women politicians of their generation do it similarly: the young congressmen in the USA around the Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, who talk about their origins from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, or about their hair loss.
They have become icons of an authenticity that particularly appeals to the zeitgeist of young voters.
Lang also shares everyday life and politics with 17,000 subscribers on Instagram and more than 52,000 followers on Twitter.
After
body positivity has
long since arrived in feminist pop thanks to singers like Lizzo or Beth Ditto, Lang is now also bringing the topic into German politics.
That fits in with a party that sees itself as feminist.
But somehow not at all about the party that advertises healthy eating on election posters and in which Joschka Fischer worked his stomach off while running a marathon.
But Lang was successful.
Shortly before jumping into parliament, however, this image of herself seems to be annoying. She receives numerous inquiries on the subject, she says, most of which she refuses. Before the meeting, your spokeswoman asks if possible to talk about things other than Lang's body. "I went into politics to improve working conditions in nursing, to give everything to stop the climate crisis, and not to be insulted and then talk about it," says Lang. After all, the men in parliaments do not always have to talk about their bodies, they simply accept them. “That should be true of women as well. But I know that it plays a role for politicians and women in other areas. "
Lang tries to position himself somehow between two worlds.
Between what it should be.
And what she is.
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The Greens could perhaps take the path from one world to the other if they were given government responsibility.
The Chancellery seems a long way off right now, but there are other options.
In any case, it becomes clear that Lang hopes for a left alliance and focuses on factual issues.
Not only does she wave large rainbow flags on pictures in her Instagram account and demonstrate for abortion law. She has also played a key role in the health policy program of her party and can speak in great detail and at the push of a button about a new hospital system or wage inequality between men and women, about single parents, spouse splitting and overcoming Hartz IV.
In general, one sometimes asks oneself whether Lang ended up in the right party. Wouldn't the left be the party for social policy that Lang wants to make? Lang sees it the other way round: For them, everything the Greens do has a socio-political dimension - and connects this with climate protection. When she joined the party at 18, her mother had just lost her job. The single social worker had worked in a women's refuge for 14 years. Then it was closed. Lang says she was hurt that her mother's work was not valued. But she realized that that could be changed.
The first step was a green party membership card.
She later became chairwoman of the Green Youth, then deputy national chairwoman of the party and spokeswoman for women's affairs.
From September she should sit in the Bundestag.
"Change is only possible together," says Lang's election posters in Schwäbisch Gmünd.
Another generation thing.
In the past, women bit their way to the top on their own, says Lang.
Today, the well-known sociologist Jutta Allmendinger also headlines her book on gender equality with the words "It's only possible together!"
“My generation doesn't want a hundred generations of women to have to fight their way through alone,” says Lang.
This does not only apply to feminism.
"The climate movement no longer appeals to people to buy differently, but to politicians to decide to phase out coal or to stop subsidizing entrepreneurs who are destroying the environment." Moving away from a neoliberal promise of individuality towards a collective political approach, explains Lang : Individualising the problem is a trick to distract from the guilt of corporations and the responsibility of politics.
The world is not getting better because a person does not buy an avocado in the supermarket.
The Greens, she thinks, have long since developed further.
It's about better politics, not better people.
Carrying feminism into the village squares
Lang wants to combine what conservatives like to play off against each other in the Greens.
Environment and social policy, for example, or feminism and the country.
"I keep hearing: Feminism, that might interest the people in Berlin, but not in our country," says Lang in Waghäusel.
But your understanding of feminism is different.
»Feminism is about the universal promise of freedom and equality for all people.
So that affects us all. "
This also includes questions of services of general interest and social infrastructure, maternity wards, daycare centers and midwives.
"I don't think that equal wages or good provisions are less important to people in rural areas." That is why, explains Lang, "feminism belongs in the village squares".
On Sunday, Lang will be on the Christopher Street Day in Cologne.
A home game: The LGBTQI community loves the Greens, and the Greens are happy to give that love back.
Lang marched with colleagues in the parade, and shortly before five she was looking for the entrance to the VIP area.
She should discuss queer politics on stage with representatives of other parties.
Bundestag Vice President Claudia Roth is also there - on stage she is celebrated like a pop star.
"Claudia," the crowd chants.
A little later, the audience booed representatives from the SPD, CDU and FDP.
When Lang enters the stage, there is another applause.
"Human rights are universal," she later calls out to the crowd.
Lang asks why the SPD is always blocked by the Union when it comes to queer political issues.
While the union representative tries helplessly to explain himself, Ricarda Lang laughs confident of victory.
Later, the Green politician stands in the VIP area of the CSD and drinks an Aperol Spritz.
A young man has just called out to her: "You're amazing, thank you!" Lang thanked her in a friendly manner.
She knows how popular she is with many of her generation.
Maybe she's even a little spoiled.
Support is good.
So good that she sometimes fears it might be different.
Then, when she is no longer the only one who demands the evacuation of local workers from Afghanistan at a demo in front of the Chancellery or demonstrates in Hungary for the rights of homosexuals.
Then when she is responsible for her own politics.
If the Greens should rule.
Lang says she is not afraid of compromises and that she knows that election promises cannot be carried out one-to-one.
But she hopes that she will do it differently than the current governing parties.
Better.