Conflict in the Ranks

It was a gesture that caught all the environmental fervor so characteristic of West Germany's Green Party. Minutes after Helmut Kohl had been elected Chancellor last March, Marieluise Beck-Oberdorf, 31, a new Green deputy, handed him a branch from a fir tree that had been exposed to acid rain. With that impulsive act, Beck-Oberdorf breached her idealistic party's agreement against any individual initiative. For her transgression, she was castigated so harshly by her parliamentary colleagues that she burst into tears.

Last week, however, a clearly outrageous gesture by a Green regional deputy...

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