"Human Rights for the Elderly, Too!" – The Gray Panthers (1981) In 1975, the senior citizens’ protection league “Graue Panther” [Gray Panthers] was formed in Wuppertal to represent the interests of older people. (The group was modeled on the American group of the same name, which was founded by Maggie Kuhn in 1970.) The motto of the German group was “Protection from Arbitrary Actions, Freedom from Patronizing Behavior, and Ending Ignorance.” After concluding an agreement with the Green Party in 1983, the chair of the association, Trude Unruh, was temporarily able to represent the interests of the Gray Panthers” in the Bundestag without having a party affiliation. In 1989, the Gray Panther Party was founded as a parliamentary offshoot of the association. This photograph shows Amanda Hommel, founder of the Hamburg chapter of the Gray Panthers, demonstrating at a gerontologists’ conference in Hamburg in 1981. Her sign reads, “Human Rights for the Elderly, Too.”