AFP

BERLIN, June 18, 2009 (AFP) - Ralf Dahrendorf, the German-British sociologist and politician, has died aged 80, a spokeswoman for the Berlin social research centre where he was a professor said on Thursday.
Born in 1929 in the northern German port city of Hamburg, Dahrendorf was a leading European intellectual, teaching at universities around the world including Oxford. He was made a British life peer in 1993 having taken dual nationality in 1988.

He was also a German member of parliament and worked at the European Commission in Brussels in the 1970s.
Dahrendorf died in Cologne on Wednesday evening. He had been suffering from cancer.
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