‘People see it as invasive’: did anti-green feeling fuel the right’s rise in Germany?

Robert Habeck, the Green climate and economy minister, at a campaign event in Hamburg in the run-up to the elections. Photograph: Marcus Brandt/AP

The empty factories in Plattling and Straßkirchen sit just 6 miles (10km) apart but they tell two very different tales about the state of Germany’s economy.

In Plattling, an ailing paper factory closed two years ago and put 500 people out of work – a casualty of high gas prices and a symbol of the nationwide “deindustrialisation” that conservatives have blamed squarely on the Greens.