Daniel Cohn-Bendit

Daniel Marc Cohn-Bendit (born April 4, 1945) was a leader of the student protesters during May 1968 in France. He is currently co-president of the group European Greens - European Free Alliance in the European Parliament.

The Frankfurt years

Back in Frankfurt in the family house, Cohn-Bendit became one of co-founders of the autonomist group Revolutionärer Kampf (Revolutionary Struggle) in Rüsselsheim. In that group was also his friend Joschka Fischer. Both were later to become leaders of the Realo wing of the German Green Party, alongside many former communist, and non-communist libertarian leftists.

Related Topics:
Frankfurt - Autonomist - Rüsselsheim - Joschka Fischer - Realo - German Green Party

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Some have suggested that the group participated in violent action, which was common in the German extreme-left of the early Seventies. But testimony from witnesses appears contradictory, sometimes unreliable. Communal apartments were common on the Left, and peaceful political activists could easily have shared living quarters with terrorists, without further collaboration. In 2003, a request was presented by Frankfurt prosecutors to the European Parliament, requesting they waive the immunity of MEP Cohn-Bendit, in the context of a criminal investigation against Hans-Joachim Klein, but the request was rejected by the assembly. Cohn-Bendit admitted having helped Klein on several instances, notably when Klein surrendered to the police.

Related Topics:
Extreme-left - Seventies - European Parliament - MEP - Hans-Joachim Klein

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While Fischer was more concerned with demonstrations, Cohn-Bendit worked in the Karl-Marx-Buchhandlung bookshop and ran a kindergarten, with the stated ambition of radically transforming German mentalities. Later in 2001, he was accused of pedophilia in the context of a political campaign against Joschka Fischer as German minister of foreign affairs, and in the wider context of conservative movements seeking to undermine the cultural legacy of May 1968. The ground of the accusation was the following quote from his book Le grand bazar, published in 1976: "It happened to me several times that certain kids opened my fly and began to tickle me. I reacted differently according to circumstances, but their desire posed a problem for me. I asked them: ?Why don't you play together? Why have you chosen me, and not the other kids?' But if they insisted, I caressed them even so." Cohn-Bendit acknowledged that the passage had been carelessly written and recognized it as inappropriate. He asked for the text to be understood in the context of the sexual revolution of the Seventies and the provocations of the time. No former parent or child from Frankfurt Kindergarten expressed any complaint, and a group was even formed in his defense.

Related Topics:
Fischer - Karl-Marx-Buchhandlung - May 1968 - Le grand bazar - 1976 - Seventies

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In the late Seventies, as many revolutionary movements were petering out, he became editor of the Pflasterstrand, the alternative magazine which served as house organ to the anarchist-oriented Sponti-Szene in Frankfurt. There he begun taking part in eco-struggles against nuclear energy and the expansion of the Frankfurt airport. When the Sponti movement officially accepted parliamentary democracy in 1984, he joined the German Green Party.

Related Topics:
Pflasterstrand - Sponti-Szene - 1984 - German Green Party

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In 1988 he published in French "Nous l'avons tant aimée, la révolution", a book full of nostalgy for the 1968 counter-culture, and where he announced his shifting for more centrist policies.

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In 1989, he became deputy mayor of Frankfurt, in charge of multicultural affairs. Immigrants made up some 30% of the city at that time. He also developed a more tolerant policy towards drugs addicts.

Related Topics:
1989 - Frankfurt

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