BERLIN: One of Germany’s most colourful politicians of the last two decades, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, has abruptly pulled the plug on his electrifying career.
The charismatic leading member of the Greens party, who has long enthralled and entertained Germans with his meteoric rise from high school dropout to self-educated vice chancellor, voluntarily moved to parliament’s back bench last week.
He will soon be replaced as foreign minister after last month’s election saw Germany’s governing coalition lose its majority, heralding a return to opposition for the Greens.
Fischer led his environmental party off the opposition benches and into government in 1998, where they have left their stamp on sweeping social, energy and foreign policy changes.
But the show — at least in Germany — is over now even if the man who reinvented himself a dozen times on a journey from stone-throwing revolutionary at a car factory to necktie-clad minister may still have his eye on top international jobs.
Fischer, 57, was once seen in Brussels as a leading contender to succeed Javier Solana, 63, should the European Union foreign policy chief resign before his term ends in 2009.
“I was one of the last live rock ‘n rollers in German politics,” Fischer said in his only newspaper interview since he surprisingly announced he would not lead the Greens in parliament. “Now the lip-synching generation is coming.”
Fischer is expected to make a farewell journey to the United States in late October shortly before Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrat (SPD)-Greens government turns over the reins to Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat-SPD coalition.
“He’s spent seven years closely working with three US secretaries of state under at times difficult circumstances,” said one diplomat, confirming a meeting was being planned. “There’s a lot of mutual respect.”
While Fischer loudly stood up to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who was defending the Iraq invasion at a conference before the war, he also shaped Germany’s staunch support of the US crackdown on militants, and operations in Afghanistan and the Balkans.
Even though Fischer was one of the most talkative and most frequently quoted German politicians in the ‘Red-Green’ era from 1998, the talented orator with the sharp tongue has gone silent and virtually disappeared from public view in recent weeks.
A newspaper published a picture of Fischer watering the plants on his balcony — looking like an ordinary retiree rather than a powerful minister. Other accounts have said he is happy just cooking pasta for his girlfriend.
The public has long been fascinated by Fischer’s life, his four broken marriages and his tendency to rapidly lose weight, gain it back and then lose it again.
He is remembered for wearing sports shoes when being sworn in as environment minister of the state of Hesse in 1985. His backing of Nato’s war over Kosovo in 1999 drew much fire: one critic burst Fischer’s eardrum with a paint-bomb.
Fischer says he won’t miss having his bodyguards, being chauffeured or any other perks of his job.—Reuters
