Daniel Cohn-Bendit

Daniel Cohn-Bendit (born 4 April 1945) is a French-German politician. Cohn-Bendit was a student leader during the unrest of May 1968 in France and was also known during that time as Dany le Rouge (French for "Danny the Red", because of both his politics and the color of his hair). He was co-president of the group European Greens–European Free Alliance in the European Parliament. He co-chairs the Spinelli Group, a European Parliament inter-group aiming at relaunching the federalist project in Europe. He was a recipient of the European Parliament's European Initiative Prize in 2016.

Cohn-Bendit's 1970s writings on sexuality between adults and children later proved controversial in 2001 and 2013. The same can be said of his statements to Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS) during the same period, and his later statements on the French TV show Apostrophes in 1982. Cohn-Bendit apparently stated that "You know, a child's sexuality is absolutely fantastic. [...] You know, when a little five-year-old girl starts undressing you, it's amazing. It's amazing because it's a game, an incredibly erotic game."

In 2013, "the paedophilia debate" in Germany was triggered when Cohn-Bendit was awarded the 2013 Theodor Heuss Prize. The Green Party, or "the Greens", of which Cohn-Bendit was associated, had its past links to MAP sympathetic perspectives probed and debated widely.

The 1975 text The Great Bazaar: Conversations with Michel Lévy, Jean-Marc Salmon, and Maren Sell, a book based on interviews with Daniel Cohn-Bendit about his life from 1968 to 1975, became a focal point of debate. Passages concerning sexual behavior between legally defined adults and children first became the subject of a controversy surrounding in 2001, but were revisited in 2013 with a broader focus on the Green Party.

In the chapter "Little Big Men", Cohn-Bendit describes his approximately two years working as a kindergarten teacher in Frankfurt am Main from 1972 to 1974. He took on this position because, in his opinion, there was too little attention paid to children in his political circles. Cohn-Bendit writes that, in his anti-authoritarian work, he strongly identified with the children in his care and developed a desire to be loved and needed by them. This also involved, in part, processing his own childhood experiences. He also found the nature of children to be very instructive; they were very empathetic and honest and possessed a remarkable understanding of adult problems.

He also describes an erotic component to his relationship with the children, with the following passages from often quoted in later debates:

My constant flirting with all the children soon took on erotic overtones. I could really feel how the little girls, as young as five, had already learned how to turn me on.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit: The Great Bazaar, Munich 1975, p. 140.

and

It has happened to me several times that some children have opened my fly and started stroking me. I reacted differently depending on the circumstances, but their request presented me with a problem. I asked them: 'Why don't you play amongst yourselves, why did you choose me and not other children?' But if they insisted, I stroked them anyway.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit: The Great Bazaar, Munich 1975, p. 143.