Winfried Kretschmann of the Greens became head of government in Baden-Württemberg in 2011, and he had opposed the Stuttgart 21 rail project. On 27 November 2011, the state’s voters decided in a referendum that it should go ahead. The next day Kretschmann said: Das Volk hat gesprochen, und das akzeptiere ich, auch wenn es nicht meinem Wunsch entspricht. (The people have spoken, and I accept that, even though it is not what I wanted.) In an open letter to the public, answering those who still demanded that the station not be built, he wrote: Die Bahn darf Stuttgart 21 bauen. (The railway may build Stuttgart 21.) In a democracy, he wrote, politics and he himself as head of government no longer had the legitimacy das Projekt Stuttgart 21 dem Grunde nach immer und immer wieder in Frage zu stellen, to question the project in principle again and again.