The life and death of Petra Kelly - Sara Parkin

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.;Petra Kelly was born Petra Lehmann in 1947 in Bavaria. She spent her teenage 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.;In this biography, Sara Parkin goes behind the public charisma of Petra Kelly 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.