Jens Reich

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Reich speaks at the major Berlin demonstration on November 4, 1989

Jens Georg Reich (born March 26, 1939 in Göttingen ) is a German physician and molecular biologist. He is best known as a non-party civil rights activist for the New Forum during the fall of the GDR , during which time he was parliamentary group spokesman for Bündnis 90 / Grüne in the freely elected People's Chamber together with Vera Wollenberger and Marianne Birthler . In 1994 he was nominated candidate for federal president by the all-German Greens , which have now merged with Alliance 90 .

Life

Jens Reich grew up in Halberstadt . After studying medicine and molecular biology at Berlin's Humboldt University , he first worked as an assistant doctor in Halberstadt. After an additional biochemical specialist training in Jena , he worked scientifically, from 1968 at the Central Institute for Molecular Biology in Berlin-Buch. Reich received his doctorate in Berlin in 1964. In 1980 he became professor for biomathematics and temporarily head of department at the Central Institute for Molecular Biology. He lost the department head position in 1984 because he refused to break off his contacts with the West and to cooperate with the Ministry of State Security .

In 1970, Reich had founded a “Friday Circle” which dealt critically with the GDR regime. In September 1989 he was one of the authors and first signatory of the appeal “Awakening 89 - NEW FORUM”, which led to the foundation of the New Forum . On November 4th, 1989 - five days before the fall of the Berlin Wall , he was one of the speakers at the largest demonstration of the time of the fall of the Wall on Alexanderplatz in Berlin. In his speech, he encouraged people to exercise their right to freedom of expression and wished for future events to include those who no longer lived in the GDR, such as Erich Loest and Wolf Biermann . He wrote for the European magazine Lettre International under the pseudonym Thomas Asperger.

After the Volkskammer election on March 18, 1990, in which the New Forum took up part of the electoral alliance Bündnis 90 , he was a member of the only freely elected Volkskammer in the GDR and, alongside Vera Wollenberger and Wolfgang Ullmann , headed the Bündnis 90 / Greens parliamentary group as spokesman ; with the German reunification he left politics in October 1990. In 1991 he received the Theodor Heuss Medal on behalf of others for "The peaceful demonstrators of autumn 1989 in the former GDR". In 1994 he was proposed by an independent initiative as a candidate for the office of Federal President (see election of the German Federal President in 1994 ) and nominated by Alliance 90 / The Greens , but was defeated in the Federal Assembly .

In 1991, Reich returned to research. He went to the USA , then became a visiting professor at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg and later a research group leader at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin. Here he worked on genome research until his retirement in 2004. Today he is the ombudsman there for questions of good scientific practice.

Reich was a member of the German Ethics Council from 2008 to 2012 and had been a member of its predecessor, the National Ethics Council , since 2001 . Since 1990 he has been co-editor of the political and scientific monthly magazine Blätter for German and international politics . He is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences .

In 2009, Reich received the Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker Prize, which was awarded for the first time this year by the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft and the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina . In the same year Reich was awarded the Schiller Prize of the city of Marbach am Neckar .

His daughter is the physics professor Stephanie Reich (* 1973).

Awards

Works

  • C Curve Fitting and Modeling for Scientists and Engineers . McGraw-Hill 1992, ISBN 0-07-051761-4
  • Farewell to the lies of life. The intelligence and the power . Rowohlt, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-87-134042-1
  • Return to Europe. To the new state of the nation . Dtv, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-423-30403-0
  • Devil questions. Ethical Conflicts in Biomedicine . 2 CD set. supposé, Cologne 2005, ISBN 978-3-932513-62-6
  • Growth as a problem: models and regulation (borderline questions of natural knowledge). Verlag Karl Alber 1997, ISBN 978-3-495-47868-4 .
  • Essay in: Peter Nöldechen: Shared memories: Reporting from the GDR 1974-1989. With an essay by Jens Reich. callidus 2009. ISBN 978-3-940677-11-2 .

literature

Web links

Commons : Jens Reich  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Birgit Hibbeler: "Jens Reich. Scientists and GDR civil rights activists". Deutsches Ärzteblatt, 106 (2009), S. B 1985
  2. ↑ Speeches at the Alexanderplatz demonstration: Jens Reich (12:24 p.m.) , website of the German Historical Museum , accessed on January 2, 2017.
  3. ↑ 'A self arises in memory' . Interview with Arno Widmann, Frankfurter Rundschau, March 26, 2019, pp. 32–33.
  4. ↑ We remember the peaceful demonstrators in autumn 1989. Theodor Heuss Foundation , accessed on February 23, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Good Scientific Practice | Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine. Retrieved March 14, 2019 .
  6. ^ Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft eV , website of the Science Prize Winners, Essen, accessed on January 2, 2017.
  7. ↑ "Master of the Smallest Particles" . The daily mirror. Retrieved July 8, 2009.
personal data
SURNAME Rich, Jens
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reich, Jens Georg (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physician, molecular biologist and politician (Neues Forum), MdV, member of the German Ethics Council
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Goettingen