A new German era dawns, but collisions lie in wait for coalition

The traffic light' parties all want progress but have different ideas about what that means on business and green issues

In Unterleuten, a bestselling novel by the German novelist Juli Zeh, the inhabitants of a village outside Berlin are shocked to find out that a plot of land on their doorstep has been earmarked for a gigantic wind farm.

One of the characters, a birdwatcher called Gerhard Fliess, knows what to do: he calls an old friend at the local environment ministry to remind him that the countryside around Unterleuten is the habitat of an endangered species of sandpiper. Surely that will halt the bulldozers.