Petra Kelly

Kelly co-founded Die Grünen in 1980 and led them into the Bundestag in 1983, the first Green breakthrough in a major national parliament. She called it an "anti-party party": ecology, non-violence, grassroots democracy and social justice, with MPs rotating out mid-term to avoid careerism. She refused to rotate herself, opposed coalitions with the Social Democrats and lost the argument to the "realos"; her history is the clearest way into the movement's founding dilemma.