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Winfried Kretschmann: "You can be happy when you've found out."
Photo: Bernd Weißbrod / dpa
Baden-Württemberg's Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann stayed in a kind of sect in his left-wing radical times in the 1970s. "Today you would call it a bubble," said the Green politician in an interview with ARD. “We always moved among the same people, developed tunnel vision over time, and had highly ideological debates. You can be happy when you've found out. «During his legal clerkship, a process of dissolving these sects began. "I was out of these milieus," said the head of government.
The 73-year-old assured him that he had really "broken radically" with his radical left-wing sentiments.
"And I didn't bring any of it over to the Greens either." He co-founded the Greens solely because of the ecological issue.
"And with many other questions I have conflicts with my party again and again today." Kretschmann spoke to journalist Hermann G. Abmayr as part of the documentary "Hunt for Constitutional Enemies - The Radical Decree and Its Victims" on Saarland Broadcasting.
Kretschmann said he was a Maoist at the time.
“In reality, however, my information about China was very poor.
Looking back, I can say that these were all very Christian impregnated impulses - in the end.
You stand on the side of the weak without classifying it in realpolitical terms, or checking it. "
The head of government said that in retrospect he was grateful for the encouragement from people like the then President of the University of Hohenheim, George Turner.
"You saw me as a person holistically and thought that at some point the cramp would stop," he said.
"So it was." As a very liberal person, Turner took the arguments at the university athletically.
"He saw through the loud mouth that was behind all this revolutionary behavior."
Kretschmann has been the head of government of Baden-Württemberg since 2011.
He is the only green prime minister.
height / dpa
