HAVING SERVED AS party cochair and lead candidate in four elections, Petra Karin Kelly became the first spokesperson of the Green Party's delegation to West Germany's federal parliament, the Bundestag, in 1983. Kelly was, by that time, known internationally as the Greens’ leader and renowned for her role in the peace movement. She was named “Woman of the Year” by the Philadelphia-based group Women Strike for Peace in 1983, and awarded the Right Livelihood Foundation's “Alternative Nobel Prize” for her activism in 1982. At her acceptance speech in Stockholm, Kelly argued that the formation of “a nonviolent, ecological, and non-exploitative republic,” required that “women must change their consciousness, break from the patriarchal circle, and free themselves from such ill-suited ideals as those of the masculine, patriarchal, and nuclear society.” The leadership positions she held, the accolades she received, and her outspoken views all drew attention to Petra Kelly. But it was ultimately her gender that defined the way she was seen by her contemporaries. She was described by fellow Green politicians such as Wilhelm Knabe and scholars such as Dieter Rucht as a modern-day “Joan of Arc.” The image stuck. In an August 2017 segment on the emergence of the Green Party, which aired throughout Germany as part of the history and science program Planet Wissen, Kelly was referred to as the “Joan of Arc of the atomic age.”

In the early 1980s Kelly was famous, female, and outspoken, but why has she consistently been compared to a French patriot of the fifteenth century? For Knabe, the comparison was intended to show that Kelly “embodied the new emancipatory self-understanding of the [Green] Party.” His statement can be interpreted as a reference to both Joan of Arc's legacy as an exceptional and emancipated woman who led an army of men into battle and her role in liberating France from British rule. Planet Wissen explained that Kelly resembled Joan in that she was “just as idealistic as she was uncompromising.” For Rucht and his coauthor Roose, the comparison with the Maid of Orleans was intended to reflect the idea that, unlike other political leaders, Kelly was merely a standard bearer, who played “no strategically important function” in her party.