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...