Oskar Brüsewitz

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Church of Rippicha (2017) with the Christ cross made of fluorescent tubes, as Oskar Brüsewitz had installed
Memorial plaque in Markkleeberg
The Protestant children's playground in Rippicha (photo from 2017) goes back to an idea by Oskar Brüsewitz
Oskar Brüsewitz's grave behind the Rippicha church

Oskar Brüsewitz (born May 30, 1929 in Willkischken , Memelland ; † August 22, 1976 in Halle an der Saale ) was a Protestant pastor who, with his public self-immolation in Zeitz in 1976, had a significant influence on the church and later opposition in the GDR .

life and death

Oskar Brüsewitz was born as the third child of a poor family of craftsmen near the Memel . After elementary school he began a commercial apprenticeship in 1943, which he had to break off in 1944 due to the events of the war. After fleeing to the West, at the age of fifteen, he was incorporated into the Wehrmacht in Warsaw . An attempt to desert failed. Towards the end of the war he was taken prisoner by the Soviets , from which he was released to the Soviet occupation zone in autumn 1945 . From 1945 to 1947 he completed an apprenticeship as a shoemaker with master shoemaker Max (Maximilian) Ogertschnig at Töpfergasse 35 in Colditz, followed by a journeyman's examination in Burgstädt near Chemnitz , where he lived with his mother, and after his journeyman's examination he moved to Melle near Osnabrück . Here he opened a shoemaker's workshop and passed the master shoemaker's examination in 1951 . In the same year Brüsewitz married and moved to Hildesheim , in 1952 daughter Renate was born. The marriage ended in divorce in 1954.

In 1954, under the impression that his marriage had failed, Brüsewitz fled to Weißenfels in the GDR and converted there to Christianity through the influence of his host family. Shortly afterwards he applied to the preacher's school in Wittenberg , but had to drop out of training due to a serious psychosomatic illness. After taking a cure, Brüsewitz went to Leipzig . Here he met Christa Rohland. After he had opened a shoemaker's workshop in Markkleeberg , they married in late 1955. In the following year their son Matthias was born, who died in 1969 due to illness. In 1958 their daughter Esther was born. In Leipzig Brüsewitz took an active part in community life.

After another illness, the family moved to Weißensee (Thuringia) in 1960 , where their daughter Dorothea was born and Brüsewitz continued to work as an independent shoemaker and - after the business was transferred to PGH Schuhmacher , based in Sömmerda - as a branch manager. Brüsewitz also took an active part in community life in Weißensee, participated in youth work and organized evangelism work in the Sömmerda church district. In particular, his unusual promotions for the evangelism caused conflicts not only with state officials but also with members of the parish council of which he was a member.

From 1964 to 1969 he attended the preacher's school in Erfurt . He was ordained in Wernigerode in 1970 and an Evangelical Lutheran pastor in Rippicha in the Zeitz district . His youth work and symbolic protest actions drew both a positive response and rigid state repression. For example, the controversial pastor countered the SED slogan “We bring in the harvest without God and sunshine” with the statement painted on a poster “Without rain, without God the whole world will go bankrupt”. The installation of a cross made of fluorescent tubes on his church made him popular on the one hand and led to unprecedented church attendance in his congregation, but on the other hand increasingly conjured up conflicts with government agencies. In addition, some of the ministerial brothers rejected him because of his unconventional methods. In 1976, the Brüsewitz church leadership suggested a transfer to another pastorate or a move to the west.

On August 18, 1976, Brüsewitz placed two posters on the roof of his car in front of the Michaeliskirche in Zeitz , on which he accused communism ( "Funkspruch an alle - Funkspruch an alle - We denounce communism for suppressing the churches in schools to children and Youth " and " Funkspruch an alle - Funkspruch an alle - The church in the GDR accuses communism! Because of the suppression of the churches in schools for children and young people " ). Then he poured gasoline over himself and lit himself. The action lasted only a short time; the posters were quickly torn away by the state security workers and the seriously injured Brüsewitz was then transported to a hospital. On August 22, 1976, Brüsewitz succumbed to his burns in the Halle-Dölau district hospital without his family being allowed to visit him. Even before his death, he told the chief doctor that his act was a "political act".

In his suicide note , he emphasized that he had not committed suicide, but that he had fulfilled a mission as a appointed witness. He complained about the "apparently deep peace that had also penetrated Christianity" while "a mighty war was raging between light and darkness". He also stressed that his "past is not worth the fame" - presumably an allusion to his divorce and his hasty departure from his first wife and daughter Renate.

Oskar Brüsewitz was buried in Rippicha on August 26, 1976; his grave is located behind the Rippicha church in the cemetery. Despite the fact that the date of the funeral was not published, around 400 people from all parts of the GDR appeared. The memorial service for Oskar Brüsewitz was closely watched. The access roads to Rippicha were monitored that day by the People's Police and civilian forces from the GDR State Security. Critical international reporting should be avoided. Nevertheless, representatives of the press from the West met in Rippicha that day. Among the participants were the family u. a. numerous Protestant and Catholic pastors, Manfred Stolpe and provost Friedrich Wilhelm Bäumer, who also spoke the last words for Oskar Brüsewitz.

Reactions to Brüsewitz's self-immolation

Michaeliskirche and memorial column

State authorities tried at first by all means to keep the events in Zeitz secret. However, when radio and television of the Federal Republic of Germany reported on the self-immolation on August 20, 1976, a message about the self-immolation appeared in the newspapers of the GDR one day later. It presented Brüsewitz's signal as an act of a psychopath . On August 31, 1976, Das Neues Deutschland published a slanderous report under the title You shall not speak false testimony with the claim that the self-immolation was the act of a person with a morbid disposition who “did not all five senses together ”. Something similar could be read in the central organ of the GDR CDU Neue Zeit . The Stasi observed the reactions to the self-immolation closely and was supposed to help prevent unpleasant statements.

The church leadership of the GDR worked out a “word to the congregations”, which was read out in many church services on August 22, 1976 and called for intercession. It distanced itself from the defamatory representations in the GDR media, but also from attempts to "use the events in Zeitz for propaganda against the German Democratic Republic".

Memorial plaque to Oskar Brüsewitz in front of the Michaeliskirche in Zeitz

At the same time, Brüsewitz 'act sparked solidarity across the GDR. Not only for the Evangelical Church in the GDR did it lead to a new definition of the situation. The singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann appeared on September 11, 1976 after an eleven-year professional ban in the Prenzlauer Nikolaikirche and described Brüsewitz 'suicide as a "republic flight into death". "35 young Marxists", including the songwriter Bettina Wegner and the writer Klaus Schlesinger , wrote a protest to the SED Central Committee and spoke out against the denigrating abuse of Brüsewitz in the media. The conflict that had initially played out between churches and government representatives became the culmination point in the opposition: Marxists and churches came together. When Wolf Biermann was expatriated two months later, the GDR government was faced with broad opposition, which became one of the roots of the fall of 1989. The then Oberkirchenrat Stolpe misunderstood what he said in 2006: "Oskar Brüsewitz was a harbinger of the system change".

On the 30th anniversary of its death in 2006, New Germany formally apologized for the article at the time, which had been written “in one of the numerous offices of the party's central committee ” and which it described as a “bad defamation”. In addition, it published a selection of critical letters to the editor from GDR citizens, thousands of which were received by the newspaper in 1976 but were not published.

Oskar Brüsewitz's protest action is also known as the “Zeitz Fanal”.

Commemoration

In the Federal Republic of Germany, on the first day of death in 1977, the Paneuropean Union founded a Brüsewitz Center in Bad Oeynhausen to document repression and support for the opposition in the GDR, supported by hundreds of politicians from the Christian-bourgeois camp, by representatives the policy of détente was fought. The Brüsewitz Center later moved to Bonn and, after reunification, to Woltersdorf . In 2003, files and images were bequeathed to the foundation for coming to terms with the SED dictatorship . Chairman was initially Olaf Kappelt , then Walburga Habsburg Douglas ; currently it is Wolfgang Stock .

In 1991, on the 15th anniversary of his death, the Brüsewitz Center opened an exhibition in Moritzburg Castle , Zeitz . In front of the Michaeliskirche in Zeitz, a memorial stele was erected on the initiative of the Märtyrerkirche relief campaign .

In the contemporary history forum of the House of History of the Federal Republic of Germany in Leipzig is u. a. exhibited the cross made of neon tubes, which Brüsewitz let shine from his church tower on the then F2 trunk road .

The community of Rippicha has been commemorating Brüsewitz regularly since 2006 : On the thirtieth anniversary of his death, the parliamentary state secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior , Christoph Bergner , on his eightieth birthday (Whitsun 2009), the Federal Government Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Aid , Günter Nooke .

Since November 20, 2015, a memorial plaque on Haus Einumer Straße 11 in Hildesheim has been commemorating Brüsewitz. The initiators of the memorial plaque, on which the sentence “His tragic death should remind us of all the victims of the SED dictatorship” can be read, are the Brüsewitz Center and the Berthold Mehm Initiative. Brüsewitz had lived on Einumer Strasse for some time in the 1950s.

The anniversary of his self-immolation, August 18, is sometimes regarded as Brüsewitz's day of remembrance, but is not included in the official evangelical calendar of names.

Copycat cases

1978

On September 17, 1978, he burned himself in Falkenstein / Vogtl, Saxony . the Protestant pastor Rolf Günther in the church; possibly the deed of pastor Brüsewitz served him as a model. In this case, however, conflicts within the church were the cause of the self-immolation.

2006

On 31 October 2006 burned himself in the Erfurt Augustinian monastery with Roland Weisselberg another Protestant minister. Here, too, the deed of Pastor Brüsewitz apparently served as a model. As the reason for this act of desperation, the pastor named in a farewell letter "concern about the spread of Islam ".

literature

Movie

  • The Troublemaker - Investigations on Oskar Brüsewitz , 1992, written and directed by Thomas Frickel

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Renate Brüsewitz-Fecht: The Cross and the Flame, Halle 2009 (autobiographical), ISBN 978-3-86634-697-0
  2. ↑ Today a plaque put up by the city on the building at Städtelner Strasse 3 reminds of the "uncomfortable" pastor
  3. ↑ domradio.de from May 30, 2016, Martyrs of the GDR, Oskar Brüsewitz on domradio.de
  4. ↑ SPIEGEL 12/1993, pp. 94–101, “I sacrifice myself” Now accessible files shed light on the background of a sensational suicide in the SED regime: The evangelical pastor Oskar Brüsewitz burned himself to death in 1976 because he desperate about communism and his own church . The SED tried to portray Brüsewitz as a crazy loner. Church officials helped, above all Manfred Stolpe.
  5. ↑ Biography, Stasi media library, report on the self-immolation of Pastor Oskar Brüsewitz in Zeitz
  6. ^ GDR history in documents , Matthias Judt, Ch. Links Verlag, 1997
  7. ^ Stasi media library photos from the place of the self-immolation of Pastor Brüsewitz
  8. ↑ Stasi media library Sketch of the location of the place of self-immolation by Pastor Brüsewitz
  9. ^ Stasi media library report on the self-immolation of Pastor Oskar Brüsewitz in Zeitz
  10. ^ Stasi media library farewell letter to the sisters and brothers of the Zeitz church district (von Brüsewitz)
  11. ^ Funeral sermon by Provost Friedrich Wilhelm Bäumer (August 26, 1976) on ekmd.de
  12. ↑ Kathrin Mileta: The life and work of Oskar Brüsewitz on bundesstiftung-aufverarbeitung.de
  13. ^ Stasi media library photos of the funeral of Pastor Brüsewitz
  14. ^ Stasi media library on the funeral of Pastor Brüsewitz on August 26, 1976 in Rippicha, Zeitz district
  15. ^ Sylvia Conradt, Deutschlandfunk, August 16, 2006, signal from Zeitz, 30 years ago the pastor Oskar Brüsewitz committed suicide
  16. ↑ Internal information from the Stasi about the self-immolation of Oskar Brüsewitz, the state and opposition reactions and measures to prevent criticism of the GDR on democie-statt-diktatur.de , a website of the Stasi records authority . Retrieved April 12, 2014.
  17. ↑ Harald Schultze: Das Signal von Zeitz , 1993, p. 169
  18. ↑ Document 55: Wolf Biermann in the Nikolaikirche Prenzlau, September 11, 1976, in: Harald Schultze et al. (Ed.): The signal from Zeitz. Reactions of the church, the state and the media to the self-immolation of Oskar Brüsewitz in 1976. A documentation . Leipzig 1993, pp. 264-267. Wolf Biermann's report from the concert was forwarded to “Spiegel” by his mother in Hamburg.
  19. ↑ Document 56: 35 young Marxists to Erich Honecker, September 14, 1976, in: Das Signal von Zeitz, Leipzig 1993, pp. 268-270.
  20. ↑ Gernot Facius: The Oskar Brüsewitz case . Die Welt , August 18, 2006, accessed on August 21, 2016.
  21. ↑ Karlen Vesper: "He surprised us all ..." Neues Deutschland, August 12, 2006, p. 24
  22. ↑ Why this hatred? Reactions to an article in the ND . New Germany, August 12, 2006, p. 24
  23. ↑ Oskar Brüsewitz in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints
  24. ↑ BStU , MfS, BV Karl-Marx-Stadt, No. 1209/79, Vol. I, Bl. 74f., Vol. II, Bl. 10-16
  25. ↑ Sonja Pohlmann: The beacon that nobody understands. In: Spiegel Online , November 3, 2006.
personal data
SURNAME Brüsewitz, Oskar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Protestant pastor
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Willkischken , Memelland , Lithuania
DATE OF DEATH 22nd August 1976
Place of death Halle (Saale) , Germany