Margrit Kennedy facts for kids
Margrit Kennedy (born November 21, 1939, in Chemnitz, Germany – died December 28, 2013, in Steyerberg, Germany) was a German architect, teacher, and writer. She cared deeply about the environment. Margrit Kennedy was also a strong supporter of new ways to use money that would help everyone and protect our planet. In 2011, she started a movement called Occupy Money.
Contents
Who Was Margrit Kennedy?
Margrit Kennedy was a very smart person who studied a lot. She earned a master's degree in Urban and Regional Planning. This is about planning how cities and towns are built. She also got a Ph.D. in Public and International Affairs from the University of Pittsburgh.
She worked as an urban planner in different countries. She helped design cities in Germany, Nigeria, Scotland, and the United States. In 1991, she became a professor at Leibniz University Hannover. She taught about building homes and cities in ways that are good for the environment.
Why Did She Care About Money?
Margrit Kennedy realized something important while working on eco-friendly buildings. She saw that it was hard to build truly green projects without changing how money works. She believed that our current money system made it difficult to protect the Earth.
She thought that new types of money, called "complementary currencies," could help. These are like local currencies that work alongside regular money. She also wanted an economy where money didn't gain "interest" (extra money charged for borrowing) and didn't lose value due to "inflation" (prices going up). She believed this would make money fairer for everyone.
Her Important Book
Margrit Kennedy wrote a very famous book. It was called Interest and Inflation Free Money, Creating an Exchange Medium that Works for Everybody and Protects the Earth. She wrote it in 1987. This book has been updated many times and translated into 22 different languages. This shows how important her ideas were to people around the world.
Her Family and Home
Margrit Kennedy was married to Declan Kennedy, who was also an architect. They had one daughter named Antja. They lived in an ecovillage called Lebensgarten in Steyerberg, Germany. An ecovillage is a community built to be very kind to the environment.
