 Kuhn was one of the founding members of the Green Party in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1980.From 1981 to 1984 he worked as a research assistant at Augsburg university and as a consultant to the parliamentary party of the Greens in the state parliament ("Landtag") of Baden-Württemberg (South-West Germany).Kuhn became an MP and the leader of the parliamentary party of the Greens (Alliance '90/The Greens from 1993) in the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg, the state's legislature, in 1984, a position he held until 1988, and then later again from 1992 to 2000, having worked as a Professor of Linguistic Communication in the years in between.