Petra Karin Kelly (29 November 1947 – 1 October 1992), a politician, was instrumental in founding the German Green Party, the first Green party to rise to prominence worldwide.
Kelly was born in
GünzburgGünzburg is a Große Kreisstadt and capital of the district of Günzburg in Swabia, Bavaria. This district was constituted in 1972 by combining the city of Günzburg—which had not previously been assigned to a Kreis —with the district of Günzburg and the district of Krumbach.Günzburg lies...
,
BavariaBavaria , with an area of and almost 12.5 million inhabitants, is located in the southeast of Germany and is the largest state of Germany by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
(then
American Occupation ZoneThe Allied powers who defeated Nazi Germany in World War II divided the country west of the Oder-Neisse line into four occupation zones for administrative purposes during the period 1945–1949. In the closing weeks of fighting in Europe, American forces had pushed beyond the previously agreed...
,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
) in 1947, with the name
Petra Karin Lehmann. She changed her name to Kelly after her mother married her stepfather, a US Army officer. She was educated in a Roman Catholic convent in Günzburg and later attended school in Georgia and Virginia after her family relocated to the United States in 1959.
Petra Karin Kelly (29 November 1947 – 1 October 1992), a politician, was instrumental in founding the German Green Party, the first Green party to rise to prominence worldwide.
Early life
Kelly was born in
GünzburgGünzburg is a Große Kreisstadt and capital of the district of Günzburg in Swabia, Bavaria. This district was constituted in 1972 by combining the city of Günzburg—which had not previously been assigned to a Kreis —with the district of Günzburg and the district of Krumbach.Günzburg lies...
,
BavariaBavaria , with an area of and almost 12.5 million inhabitants, is located in the southeast of Germany and is the largest state of Germany by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
(then
American Occupation ZoneThe Allied powers who defeated Nazi Germany in World War II divided the country west of the Oder-Neisse line into four occupation zones for administrative purposes during the period 1945–1949. In the closing weeks of fighting in Europe, American forces had pushed beyond the previously agreed...
,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
) in 1947, with the name
Petra Karin Lehmann. She changed her name to Kelly after her mother married her stepfather, a US Army officer. She was educated in a Roman Catholic convent in Günzburg and later attended school in Georgia and Virginia after her family relocated to the United States in 1959. She lived and studied in the United States until her return to
West GermanyWest Germany is a common English name for the period of the Federal Republic of Germany between its' formation in May 1949 to German reunification in October 1990, when the German Democratic Republic was dissolved and the five states on its territory joined the Federal Republic of Germany,...
in 1970. She retained her (West) German citizenship throughout her life.
An admirer of
Martin Luther King, Jr.Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist and prominent leader in the African-American civil rights movement. His main legacy was to secure progress on civil rights in the United States and he is frequently referenced as a human rights icon today. King is recognized as a martyr...
, she campaigned for
Robert F. KennedyRobert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy , also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician. He was a younger brother of President John F. Kennedy and acted as one of his advisers during his presidency. From 1961 to 1964, he was the U.S...
and
Hubert HumphreyHubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and...
in the 1968 U.S. elections. She studied political science at the School of International Service at
American UniversityAmerican University is a private United Methodist-affiliated research university in Washington, D.C., USA, the main campus of which comes to a corner at the intersection of Nebraska and Massachusetts Avenues at Ward Circle, straddling the Spring Valley, Wesley Heights, and American University Park...
(Washington, DC), from which she graduated in 1970. She graduated from the European Institute at the University of Amsterdam in 1971.
While working at the
European CommissionThe European Commission acts as an executive of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union.The Commission operates in the method of cabinet government, with 27...
(Brussels, Belgium, 1971–83), she participated in numerous peace and environmental campaigns in Germany and other countries.
Die Grünen
Petra Kelly was one of the founders of
Die GrünenDie Grünen may refer to:*Austrian Green Party*German Green Party*Green Party of Switzerland...
, the German Green Party in 1979. Between 1983 and 1990, she was a member of the
BundestagThe Bundestag is the parliament of Germany. It was established with Germany's constitution of 1949 and is the successor of the earlier Reichstag...
(German Parliament).
Kelly received the
Right Livelihood AwardThe Right Livelihood Award, established in 1980 by Jakob von Uexkull, is an award that is presented annually, usually on 9 December, to honour those "working on practical and exemplary solutions to the most urgent challenges facing the world today"...
(also known as the
Alternative Nobel Prize) in 1982 "...for forging and implementing a new vision uniting ecological concerns with disarmament, social justice, and human rights."
Kelly wrote the book "Fighting for Hope" in 1984 published by South End Press. The book is an urgent call for a world free from violence between North and South, men and women, ourselves and our environment.
Murdered, 1992
In 1992, she was shot dead in Bonn while sleeping, according to the police by her partner, ex-general and Green politician
Gert BastianGert Bastian was a German military officer and politician with the German Green Party.Born in Munich, Bastian volunteered to fight for Germany in World War Two at the age of nineteen. He served on the Eastern Front being wounded by a bullet in the right arm and in the head by a grenade fragment....
(born 1923), who then killed himself. Kelly's friends believe her death was totally unexpected and occurred without her consent. She was 44; he was 69. Her body was discovered on 19 October, and it was determined she had died on 1 October. Petra Kelly was buried in the Waldfriedhof in
WürzburgWürzburg is a city in the region of Franconia which lies in the northern tip of Bavaria, Germany. Located on the Main River, it is the capital of the Regierungsbezirk Lower Franconia. The regional dialect is Franconian....
, near the village of Heidingsfeld in Lower
FranconiaFranconia is a region of Germany comprising the northern parts of the modern state of Bavaria, a part of southern Thuringia, and a much smaller region in northeastern Baden-Württemberg called Heilbronn-Franken...
, Bavaria.
Legacy
With the goal of furthering Petra Kelly's ideas and political message, the Petra Kelly Foundation was founded in 1997 as part of the
Heinrich Böll FoundationThe Heinrich Böll Foundation , affiliated with the German Green Party and headquartered in Berlin, Germany, is a legally independent political foundation named after writer Heinrich Böll ....
. Since 1998, the foundation has presented the Petra Kelly Prize for Human Rights, Ecology, and Nonviolence. The city of Barcelona has established the Jardi Petra Kelly on
MontjuïcMontjuïc is a hill located in Barcelona, Spain.-Etymology:Montjuïc is translated as 'Hill of the Jews' in medieval Catalan, or is perhaps related to the Latin phrase Mons Jovicus...
.
In the words of her friend, the Dalai Lama: "Petra Kelly was a committed and dedicated person with compassionate concern for the oppressed, the weak, and the persecuted in our time. Her spirit and legacy of human solidarity and concern continue to inspire and encourage us all." Another of her close friends, philanthropist and Greatest Planet founder David Gilmour, wrote in the
Frankfurter Allgemeine ZeitungThe Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , also known as F.A.Z., is a national German newspaper, founded in 1949. It is published daily in Frankfurt am Main. The Sunday edition is the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung . F.A.Z...
: "EVERGREEN is the word that comes to mind when describing Petra Kelly. If not quite a daughter of the soil, she was a granddaughter of it, and her concern for our planet led her to become an environmentalist, indeed the first female environmentalist to achieve such resounding political success."
External resources
- The Life and Death of Petra Kelly by Sara Parkin, Rivers Oram Press/Pandora, 1995 (ISBN 0-04-440940-0)
- Thinking Green! Essays on Environmentalism, Feminism, and Nonviolence by Petra K. Kelly, Parallax Press, Berkeley, California, 1994 (ISBN 0-938077-62-7)
- Nonviolence Speaks to Power by Petra K. Kelly, online book, almost complete text (also, out of print, published by Matsunaga Institute for Peace, University of Hawaii, 1992, ISBN 1-880309-05-X)
External links