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BOCHUM, Germany — Woman wanting to relocate Chancellor Angela Merkel Behind him, the steel skeleton of a disused coal mining rig, and a sea of ​​waiting faces in front of him, took the stage with his sneakers and leather jacket. In a warm-up show, a man with an Elvis feather wrapped in a rainbow flag sang “Imagine.”

The Green Party candidate for prime minister, Annalena Baerbock, is asking the Germans to do just that. To dream of a country that runs entirely on renewable energy. To imagine a relatively unknown and untested 40-year-old as the next chancellor. To dream of your party that has never run before Germanyis leading the government after next month’s elections.

“This election is not just about what happens in the next four years, it’s about our future,” Ms. Baerbock told the crowd, taking her case to a traditional coal district that closed its last mine three years ago.

“We need change to protect what we love and value,” he said in this skeptical, not hostile, territory. “Change takes courage, and change is at the ballot box on September 26.”

After 16 years of Ms. Merkel, it remains to be seen how much change the Germans really want. The chancellor has made herself indispensable, going through numerous crises such as financial, immigration, populist and pandemic, and solidifying Germany’s leadership on the continent. If other candidates Compete to see who can be the most like him.

Ms. Baerbock, on the contrary, aims to shake the status quo. It’s forcing the Germans to deal with the crises that Ms Merkel has largely left unattended: decarbonising the strong auto industry; get the country off coal; Rethinking trade relations with strategic competitors like China and Russia.

It’s not always an easy sell. In an unusually close race, there is still an outside chance for the Greens to catch up with Germany’s two-incumbent party. But even if they do not join, almost no combination of parties is conceivable without them in the next coalition government. This makes Ms. Baerbock, her ideas and her party central to Germany’s future.

But the Germans still know him.

Ms. Baerbock, a 32-year-old MP and a competitive trampoline player in her youth with two teenage daughters, burst onto Germany’s national political scene just three years ago when she was elected one of the two leaders of the Greens. Who is Annalena? A newspaper asked at that time.

After being nominated as the Greens’ first prime ministerial nominee in April, Ms. Baerbock briefly outstripped her rivals in Germany’s long-dominated parties: Armin Laschet, leader of the Christian Democrats, and Olaf Scholz, of the centre-left Social Democrats, who now leads the race.

But after stumbling over and over again, he fell behind. Opponents accused Ms. Baerbock of plagiarism after it was revealed that she had not cited certain passages from a recently published book. The imprecise labeling of some of her affiliates led to headlines about her filling out her resume.

More recently, he and his party failed to take over Deadly flooding in western Germany that killed more than 180 people To reinvigorate his campaign, even as the catastrophe pushes climate change – the Greens’ top issue – high on the political agenda.

Hoping to reset her campaign, Ms. Baerbock carries her speech to German voters in 45 cities and towns across the country as she travels in a bright green double-decker bus covered with solar panels.

It was no accident that his first stop was in Germany’s western state, the industrial heart of North Rhine-Westphalia. floods this summer and is run by Mr. Laschet, who has been criticized for mishandling the disaster.

“Climate change is not something that is far away in other countries, climate change is here and now with us,” Ms. Baerbock told a crowd of several hundred students, workers and young parents in Bochum with her children.

“Rich people will always be able to buy their way out, but most people can’t,” he said. “This is why climate change and social justice are two sides of the same coin for me.”

Leaving the stage with her microphone, Ms. Baerbock later mingled with the audience and received questions about all sorts of issues, such as managing schools during the pandemic, cybersecurity, and apologizing for her first missteps.

“Yes, we have made mistakes and I am angry with myself,” he said. “But I know where I want to go.”

If there’s one thing that sets Ms. Baerbock apart from her competitors, it’s youthful confidence combined with relative openness and bold vision. He is the next generation of the Green Party, which has come a long way since its foundation as a radical “anti-party party” forty years ago.

In those early days, the aim was not to rule, but to oppose.

For Ms. Baerbock, “management is radical.”

The evolution of his party from an extreme protest movement to a serious candidate for power in many ways mirrors his own biography.

Born in 1980, he’s as old as his party. As a young boy, his parents took him to anti-NATO protests. When he joined the Greens as a student in 2005, he had completed his first term in government as junior partner of the party Social Democrats.

By now, many voters have come to see the Greens as a mature party that sticks to its principles. It is pro-environmental, pro-European and unapologetically pro-immigration.

Ms. Baerbock proposes to spend 50 billion euros, approximately $59 billion annually on green investments for ten years, to finance Germany’s transformation into a carbon-neutral economy, paying for this by removing the country’s strict balanced budget rule.

It would increase taxes on the top earners and impose tariffs on non-carbon neutral imports. It envisions solar panels on every roof, a world-class electric car industry, higher minimum wages and climate subsidies for the low-income. He wants to team up with the US to toughen up against China and Russia.

It’s also tied to Germany’s growing diversity – it’s the only candidate to speak of the country’s moral responsibility to take in some Afghan refugees beyond those helping Western soldiers.

Ms. Baerbock’s ambition to break taboos at home and abroad and her rise as a serious challenge to the status quo draws the attention of voters as the election draws near.

It has also made him the target of online disinformation campaigns from the far right and others. A fake nude picture circulated with the caption “I needed money.” The fake quotes say it wants to ban all pets to minimize carbon emissions.

Ms. Baerbock’s enemies in the mainstream conservative media also did not hold back, exploiting every stumbling block she made.

Many who heard his speech in Bochum recently said they were impressed by his confident speech (he spoke without notes) and his willingness to engage with voters in front of the cameras.

“She focused on issues, not emotions,” said Katharina Münch, a retired teacher. “It looks really solid.”

Others were concerned about his young age and lack of experience.

“What did he do to run for prime minister?” said Frank Neuer, a 29-year-old sales clerk, on his way to work. “I mean, it’s like running for chancellor.”

Political observers say the attacks on Ms. Baerbock were disproportionate and reveal a deeper phenomenon. Despite having a female prime minister for almost two decades, women still face harsher scrutiny and sometimes outright sexism in German politics.

“My candidacy is polarizing in a way unimaginable for many women my age,” Ms. Baerbock said. He was sitting on the top floor of the campaign bus between stops, in a bright wood-panelled cabin.

“In some ways what I went through is similar to what happened in the US when Hillary Clinton escaped,” he added. “I am for renewal, others are for the status quo, and of course those who have an interest in the status quo see my candidacy as a declaration of war,” he said.

When Ms Merkel first took office at the age of 51 in 2005, she was routinely described as Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s “daughter” and received endless comments about her haircut, but also endless questions about her competence and her readiness for office. Even allies in his own party dismissed him as interim leader at the time.

Miss Baerbock’s response to such challenges is not to hide her youth or motherhood, but to lean on them.

“It’s up to me as a mother, to us as a society, to us adults, to be prepared for our children’s questions: Have you taken action?” said. “Have we done everything to secure the climate and with it the freedom of our children?”

Christopher F. Schuetze Contributed to reporting from Berlin.