If you are looking for people who shaped Europe and I would come up with Daniel Cohn-Bendit, you may certainly laugh. Or you ask “Daniel who?”. However, Cohn-Bendit is the only politician, who was elected separately in two different countries. He is someone who changed society in France and in Germany, and he always thought and lived as a real European. This is his story:

Born 1945 in Montauban, Daniel Cohn-Bendit grew up in France. His parents, two Jewish Germans from Berlin, fled the Nazi regime in 1933 but came back in 1952 to settle in Frankfurt. Consequently, Daniel spoke and felt both French and German already as a child. In 1965 Cohn-Bendit started to study in Paris and became the leader of the student revolution in May 1968. DCB was known as Dany le rouge (Dany the red) due to his communist conviction and the color of his hair. Majorly influenced by Rudi Dutschke (the leader of the German student movement), Cohn-Bendit brought his ideas across the Rhine to France. The students wanted a change in society, they wanted to break with traditional values and they fought for more democracy. When the Parisian police brutally stopped a demonstration of 20,000 students on 13 May 1968, Cohn-Bendit, together with students and labor unions, proclaimed a general strike in France. Nearly 10 million French were on strike, Paris was in flames and Daniel Cohn-Bendit was banished to Germany.

Back in Germany, he got to know Joschka Fischer. Together they became members of the new German ecological movement ”Die Grünen”. Their fresh, new and modern ideas quickly attracted many adherents, and the new party entered the Bundestag (German National Parliament) in 1983. They were seen as revolutionary, because they did everything to provoke the rest of the parliament, like wearing jeans and sneakers, having long beards and knitting scarfs during the session. Cohn-Bendit worked together with Fischer (the later minster of foreign affairs in Germany) in Frankfurt. They founded the first coalition between the SPD and DIE GRÜNEN and Cohn-Bendit became the responsible for “multicultural affairs” in Frankfurt – the first political job to focus on immigration and foreigners in Germany.

In 1994, the ecological party of Germany obtained 17.8% of the votes in the European elections and so Daniel Cohn-Bendit entered the European Parliament. He stayed in the Parliament for 20 years (1994-2014), first for the German ecologic party, then for the French one, then for the European Green Party and lastly again for Europe Écologie (the French ecologic party in the parliament). Due to his long adherence to ecological parties, he was now called Dany le Vert (Dany the Green), with reference to his ancient nickname Dany le Rouge. During his period of office, he was a strong proponent for more immigration, the abandon of nuclear power and the legalization of soft drugs. He was also very committed in the attempt to create a European identity. For example, he proposed that every European should voluntarily live for a year in another European country in order to see life and oneself from another European perspective – just like he always had done.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit always felt as a European and not as French or German. He always fought for the liberty of expression and he always was taking sides with the youth, either as a leader of the students in Paris in 1968, as a founder of the ecological movement in Germany or as a representative in the European Parliament. Now, next time you will hear Daniel Cohn-Bendit you will no longer ask yourself “Daniel who?” but think of him as a fighter and a great European.