Faced with protests against the German coalition government and her party in particular, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of the Greens has decried intimidation in public discourse.
"This is a completely different country - with intimidation - and we can't discuss things with each other," Baerbock told students at a sixth form centre in Neuruppin in the state of Brandenburg to the north-west of Berlin on Thursday.
"Fortunately," plenty of those people do not vote for her party, she said.
People all over the world envy Germany for the fact that everyone can go to school, that medical treatment is available to all and that Germany takes in refugees fleeing war., Baerbock said.
Diversity is what makes the country strong - not hatred and incitement, while people in other countries "are dying" for the goal of an open discourse, she said.
On the fringes of Baerbock's visit, some 100 people gathered to protest the policies of the three-way coalition government, which in addition to the Greens includes Chancellor Olaf Scholz's centre-left Social Democrats and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP).
Farmers in tractors also wanted to join the protest, but were stopped by the police and asked to join instead on foot.
The protesters were calling for an end to the war in Ukraine and asking for policies geared toward the "middle class," and the agricultural sector. Some protestors called for Germany's borders to be closed.
