[3][4] Ströbele completed his military service in the early Bundeswehr's Air Force operations in Aurich as a reserve gunner.

[3] He was also a member of the "Socialist Lawyers' Collective" for ten years,[3] and rose to national fame defending militants of the urban guerrilla movement Red Army Faction and other political activists.

[5] He defended the Kommunard Dieter Kunzelmann, his colleague Mahler, who had joined the RAF, and finally also the leading figures of the terrorist group, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Ulrike Meinhof.

[6] In 1983, Ströbele was convicted by the Berlin District Court of supporting terrorist groups through his smuggling of information between members serving in prison.

[15] During the early years of the Schröder government Ströbele became opposed to the politics of Green foreign minister Joschka Fischer, in particular the troop deployments in the Kosovo War (1999) as well as Operation Enduring Freedom (2001).

Given his local reputation, other parties tried to counter him with creative campaigns (notably Vera Lengsfeld's "We have more to offer") for the federal elections of 2009 but again Ströbele won the direct mandate, now by 46.8% of the vote and again with 39.9% in 2013.

[22] In 2011, Ströbele joined Gerhard Schick, Anton Hofreiter and Winfried Hermann in their successful 2011 constitutional complaint against the refusal of Chancellor Angela Merkel's government to provide information on the Deutsche Bahn and financial market supervision.

In its judgment pronounced in 2017, the Federal Constitutional Court held that the government had indeed failed to fulfill its duty to give answers in response to parliamentary queries and to sufficiently substantiate the reasons.

Benedict then singled his party out for praise, saying that "the emergence of the ecological movement in German politics since the 1970s" represented a "cry for fresh air which must not be ignored or pushed aside.

"[33] During the Eurozone crisis, Ströbele was the only member of the Green Party's parliamentary group to vote against Germany's support for implementing a series of financial support measures such as the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and European Stability Mechanism (ESM) in June 2012,[34] citing constitutional objections.

The court ruled that while the government did not have to disclose information about planned defense exports, it did have an obligation to provide the Bundestag with details, on request, once specific arms deals had been approved.

[2] Upon his death at the age of 83, his lawyer released the statement: He decided himself that he no longer wanted to continue the long ordeal that his illness had imposed on him and he reduced life-sustaining measures.