Born April 4, 1945
Montauban, Midi-Pyrenees, France

Social reformer and Green Party representative in the European Parliament

Daniel Cohn-Bendit has worked for more than three decades to create a utopia, or ideal society, in Europe. As a student leader in France in 1968 Cohn-Bendit drew millions of students and workers into the streets to demand everything from a shorter workweek to sexual liberation. In the 1980s Cohn-Bendit joined the German Green Party and pushed for social and environmental reforms throughout Europe. In 1999 he returned to France, the country that expelled him in 1968, and announced his intention to run for mayor of Paris in 2001.

Child of Jewish Refugees

Daniel Cohn-Bendit was born on April 4, 1945, in a town called Montauban in the south of France. His parents were German Jews who had fled their homeland in 1933 when the Nazis took power. (The Nazi Party—an abbreviation for the National Socialist...