Fritz Kuhn
Fritz Kuhn (b. June 29, 1955) is a German politician. He was co-chairman of Alliance '90/The Greens, the German Green party, from June 2000 to December 2002.
Early years
Fritz Kuhn was born in Bad Mergentheim (Baden-Württemberg) and grew up in Memmingen (Bayern), where he attended Bernhard Strigel grammar school. After his A-levels he studied German and philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the University of Tübingen, with a master's thesis in the field of linguistics.
He was one of the founding members of the Green Party in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1980.
From 1981 to 1984 he worked as a research assistant at Augsburg university and as a consultant to the parliamentary party of the Greens in the state parliament (Landtag) of Baden-Württemberg (South-West Germany).[1]
Member of parliament in Baden-Württemberg
He became an MP and the leader of the parliamentary party of the Greens (Alliance '90/The Greens from 1993) in the Baden-Württemberg legislature in 1984, a position he held until 1988, and then later again from 1992 to 2000, having worked as a Professor of Linguistic Communication in the years in between.
Fritz Kuhn was one of the two federal chairpersons of Alliance '90/The Greens from 2000 to 2002, first together with Renate Künast, then with Claudia Roth. He resigned from that office in October 2002 after having been elected as a member of the Bundestag, the parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany. There was a rule in the Green Party in those days that you could not be an MP and hold a party office at the same time.[1]
Member of the parliament of Germany
Fritz Kuhn has served as a member of the Bundestag since 2002, between 2005 and 2009 also as one of the two leaders of the Green parliamentary party there (together with Renate Künast), since 2009 as deputy leader. In the Bundestag, he specialized in the fields of the economy (fighting for “a green market economy” [2]) and employment, and foreign policy in recent years.
In the election campaign of 2005 Kuhn was the campaign manager of Alliance ‘90/The Greens.
He is a member of the board of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, a political foundation close to the Green Party.
Private life
Kuhn is married and has two sons.
His hobbies are reading (favourite author: Salman Rushdie), running, and cooking (especially Italian dishes). He is also a football fan (FC Bayern Munich).[1]