Daniel Kon-Bendit European politician. Leader of student unrest in France. Date of Birth: 04.04.1945 Country: France

Biography of Daniel Cohn-Bendit

Daniel Cohn-Bendit is a European political figure and leader of student movements in France. He was born into a family of German Jews who fled Nazi persecution in 1933 and settled in France. Cohn-Bendit spent his childhood in Paris before moving to Germany in 1958, where his father worked as a lawyer.

He attended the prestigious Odenwaldschule in Heppenheim, a school for children from upper-middle-class families. Despite not having citizenship by birth, Cohn-Bendit obtained dual citizenship of the Federal Republic of Germany and France at the age of 18. However, he renounced his French citizenship to avoid conscription into the military.

In 1966, Cohn-Bendit returned to France and enrolled in the Paris University at the Nanterre campus, studying social sciences under the guidance of future information society theorist Manuel Castells. Shortly after starting university, he joined the influential Anarchist Federation but left in 1967 to join a smaller local anarchist group in Nanterre and the journal "Noir et rouge".

While living in Paris, Cohn-Bendit frequently traveled to Germany. He was deeply affected by the killing of West Berlin student Benno Ohnesorg by the police during a demonstration against the visit of the Iranian Shah in 1967, as well as the assassination attempt on Rudi Dutschke in April 1968. He invited Karl-Dieter Wolff, the leader of the Socialist German Student Union, to give a lecture in Paris, which had a significant influence on the subsequent May events.

At Nanterre, Cohn-Bendit led a movement for sexual freedom. He gained notoriety by requesting a cigarette from the Minister of Education during a speech celebrating the opening of a university swimming pool in Nanterre, and later demanding unrestricted access to the women's dormitory. These actions and others brought him to the attention of students, with whom he later organized the March 22 Movement, an anarchist-communist group.

In late 1967, rumors of Cohn-Bendit's impending expulsion from the university sparked local student unrest, leading to the withdrawal of the expulsion order. On March 22, 1968, students occupied administrative buildings, and after the university's closure on May 2, student protest actions moved to the center of Paris.

From May 3, 1968, mass student protests against the government of Charles de Gaulle began in Paris, led mainly by left-radical youth (anarchists, Trotskyists, Maoists). Cohn-Bendit was portrayed by the French media as one of the leaders of the student uprising, alongside Jacques Sauvageot, Alain Geismar, and Alain Krivine. Opponents of the student movement often reminded people of his "foreign" roots, and during speeches, students often chanted, "Nous sommes tous les juifs allemands" ("We are all German Jews").

Georges Marchais, the leader of the French Communist Party, called Cohn-Bendit a "German anarchist" and referred to the protesting students as "bourgeois sons" who would quickly forget their revolutionary fervor when it was their turn to run their fathers' companies and exploit workers. However, the brutal police crackdown on student protests forced trade unions and subsequently the Communist Party to support the students, leading to a general strike in France starting on May 13.

Despite Cohn-Bendit's significant role in the student movement, he did not participate in these events. Seeing that his group in Nanterre had no political influence, he left with a few friends for the Atlantic coast town of Saint-Nazaire on May 10. However, he was deported back to Germany on May 22. Massive demonstrations in late May led to the announcement of elections to the National Assembly, which took place in late June and resulted in a victory for de Gaulle's supporters.