Renate Künast
Renate Elly Künast (born 15 December 1955) is a German politician of Alliance 90/The Greens party. She was the Minister of Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture from 2001 to 2005 and subsequently served as chairwoman of her party's parliamentary group in the Bundestag. Early life and career Künast was born in Recklinghausen, North Rhine-Westphalia. She studied social work in Düsseldorf and worked from 1977 to 1979 in this profession in a jailhouse in Berlin. After that she studied law at the Free University of Berlin until 1985. During her student years, she often protested against the Gorleben nuclear-fuel reprocessing plant. She later worked as lawyer specializing on aliens law and criminal law. Political career Career in state politics Since 1979, Künast has been a member of the German Green Party (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen), first in the Alternative List in West Berlin. In the 1990s she was member of parliament and chairwoman of the Green Party's group in the state parliament of Berlin. During that time, she won cross-party respect for her leading role in drafting a new democratic constitution for the reunified city-state. Künast eventually became the party's spokeswoman for legal issues. In 1998, she re-assumed the floor leadership post