Police could not determine whether Kelly wanted Bastian to shoot her. But Peter Iwand, of the prosecutor’s office in Bonn, insisted that the possibility of murder by a third party “can be excluded.” Kelly had been under strain. A gaunt, high-strung woman with shadows under her eyes from a kidney condition, she was a relentless idealist who had become a paranoid loner, friends said. In Germany’s 1990 election, Kelly lost her seat in the Bundestag when the Greens failed to get the 5 percent of the vote needed for representation. A year later Kelly couldn’t even win election to her party’s executive body. Her pragmatic views alienated far-left members, and she was accused of self-promotion, a deadly sin among the egalitarian Greens. “She had no meaning in public life in this country anymore,” said former party manager Michael Vesper. “The Greens eat their children.”
Kelly was born to German parents but took the name of her American stepfather, an army lieutenant colonel. She grew up partly in the United States, where she learned about politics in the campaigns of Robert Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. Her young half sister died horribly of leukemia, an experience that triggered Petra’s lifelong obsession with radioactivity in the environment. Returning to Europe, she did trailblazing ecological work for the European Commission, and in 1980, with a handful of companions, she incorporated the Green Party. She fought tirelessly for women’s causes and human rights and against nuclear arms and nuclear energy. She met Bastian in 1983, after his ouster from the army for opposing the deployment of U.S. medium-range nuclear missiles in West Germany. Both were elected to Parliament the same year.
Kelly’s friends couldn’t believe she had committed suicide, or that Bastian had murdered her. They found it significant that she didn’t leave a note. “Petra sent out press releases every day,” said Benjamin Putter, a former aide. “Everything she did, she marketed it to the press.” California publisher Arnold Kotler, who saw the couple on Sept. 26, said their relationship seemed “caring, relaxed and intimate.” He found Kelly optimistic about her plans, including a new book and a political comeback.
Another friend, a Yugoslav expatriate named Bojana Mladenovic, said Kelly told her that her life was threatened by neo-Nazi skinheads last March. Far-right violence against foreigners was one of Kelly’s last causes. “Petra Kelly worked for peace, freedom and equality to the point of self-sacrifice,” German President Richard von Weizsacker wrote in a letter of condolence to her grandmother. Whatever private misery or public grievance led to her death, it quenched a flame of commitment that burned far more fiercely than most.
