The Life and Death of Petra Kelly

By Sara Parkin

Book Overview

On 20 October 1992 Petra Kelly, founder of the German Green Party and one of the most charismatic radical leaders of postwar Europe, was found dead in her Bonn home. She had been shot through the head. Her lover, Gert Bastian, was lying shot dead in the hallway. The couple had lain undiscovered for almost three weeks. years in fifties America, after her mother remarried a GI and the family moved to Virginia. After a displaced adolescence Kelly threw herself into politics and cut her political teeth working on the campaigns of Hubert Humphrey and Robert Kennedy. She returned to Europe in the late 60s. Her extraordinary political passion ensured that she immediately shot to prominence within the emerging green and peace movements. By the mid-70s Die Grunen was a vibrant force, and Petra their tireless international ambassador. to reveal the contradictions of her complex character, a woman at once sure of her vision but desperately insecure, wielding massive power in the outside world but wholly dependant in her intimate life. The book sheds new light on the reasons behind, and circumstances of, her death.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 004440896X
• ISBN13: 9780044408963
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Rivers Oram Press
• Length: 230 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Petra Kelly- Freedom to Think Differently

Sara Parkin's meticulously researched and first biography of Petra Kelly, opens the green kimono of her very public persona to reveal a complex character who was publically revered for her charismatic leadership but privately was deeply vulnerable and uncertain in her intimate private life. Through her window on Petra's life, Parkins solidarity with in her sensitive explorations of her journey feels somehow biographical for her in certain points. Born in Bavaria in 1947, it was clear early on in Petra's childhood that Kelly was different from a young age when her teachers in the Roman Catholic convent in Gunzberg continually commented to her parents that the child was special. After her family moved from Germany to Georgia in 1960, she not only threw herself into school politics, public speaking, writing and academics, but also became a local celebrity, foreshadowing of her ability to excel at anything she put her mind to. There were not enough hours in the day for Kelly, who read whatever books she could get her hands on about those who inspired her including Martin Luther King, Henry David Thoreau, the Dalai Lama and more. In 1966 she entered the School of International Service at American University in Washington, D.C, majoring in political science and international relations.During university she continued to involve herself in myriad organizations and clubs, organizing the first International Week (now an annual event). She passionately campaigned for Robert Kennedy who became her political idol, and after his murder, for Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 elections. Both were in correspondence directly with Petra throughout her college career. The non-violent civil rights movement of African Americans and the Vietnam War engaged her spirit viscerally and irrevocably. One of the new revelations in Parkin's biography is some of the elements of Petra's personal life that were heretofore unknown. For example, the death of Kelly's half sister Grace in 1970 to eye cancer was a pivotal point in her life; thereafter she decided to dedicate her life to non violence. Despite the fact that Grace's cancer was incurable and unrelated to nuclear issues, as Parkin asserts `nuclear technology represented for Petra the epitome of violence, to the health and safety of people and the environment', and thus the cause of nuclear disbarment became one of her rallying cries. It was Grace in particular that motivated her to become an activist for this cause. Kelly would dedicate the rest of her life to her involvement in antiwar, civil rights, antinuclear, and feminist movements. Kelly had dreamt of creating an `anti party' party, and achieved this goal in 1979 with the creation of the new nonviolent ecological German Green Party. She was elected to chairperson in 1980, becoming the becoming the first German female head of a political party. Throughout the next ten years she stayed involved in grassroots activism, building bridges across disciplines and b