Tom Sello

Tom Sello and Klaus Wowereit, 2009

Wolfram "Tom" Sello (born October 15, 1957 in Meißen ) is a German publicist and since 2017 has been commissioned to come to terms with the SED dictatorship in the state of Berlin. In the GDR he was involved in various opposition groups.

Life

Tom Sello grew up in Großenhain , his father was a hat maker, his mother helped in the private craft business. From 1974 to 1977, he graduated in Riesa a professional education for construction workers. He was then drafted into the National People's Army (NVA) as a conscript and released as a soldier a year and a half later. Because he did not want to sign up as a reservist for the NVA, he was not allowed to study. From 1979 to 1981 he worked as a bricklayer in the Berlin beverage combine, then until 1989 in the SHB Möbel Berlin. It was only in 1987 that he was able to start a distance learning course in civil engineering. From 1990 he was involved in the founding and development of the Matthias Domaschk Archive in the Berlin Environment Library , which in 1993 changed to the Robert Havemann Society . From 1993 to 2017 Sello was an employee of the Robert Havemann Society in the areas of archives, public relations, political education and research. In 2007 he took over the project management “Peaceful Revolution” (exhibition, memorial steles, events, publications). In 2009 he curated the exhibition on the 20th anniversary of the Peaceful Revolution on Berlin's Alexanderplatz .

Sello has two sons and lives in Berlin.

Opposition engagement during the SED dictatorship

In 1980 Tom Sello began to work in various oppositional peace and ecology groups, including from November 1987 in the environmental library . In the early 1980s he was involved in organizing bicycle demonstrations in East Berlin. In 1982 he and friends distributed leaflets against the new military service law and the militarization of society. Together with other members of the opposition, he inhabited the Fehrbelliner Straße 7. The Stasi persecuted him because of block-border contacts with the Dutch peace movement in the Operational procedure "draft". Denials of travel requests were one of the consequences. From 1988 to 1989 he wrote for the samizdat magazines Umweltblätter and telegraph . During the Peaceful Revolution in the GDR in May 1989 he was involved in uncovering the falsification of local elections and in October 1989 in the vigil at the Gethsemane Church (Berlin) . In September 1990 he took part in the occupation of the archive in which the files of the Ministry for State Security were stored and again organized a vigil. These actions by civil rights activists made a significant contribution to the fact that those persecuted by the SED state could read their Stasi files and that research into the mechanisms of the communist dictatorship became possible.

Volunteering

Sello has been a member of the Advisory Board on Social Approach / Victims and Commemoration of the Federal Foundation for Coming to terms with the SED dictatorship since 1998.

State representative for coming to terms with the SED dictatorship

In 2017 Sello was elected as the state commissioner for coming to terms with the SED dictatorship in the state of Berlin. The term of office is five years. Sello succeeded Martin Gutzeit , the state commissioner for processing the documents of the state security service of the former GDR.

Honors

• 2005 Grimme Online Award for the conception of jugendopposition.de
• October 1st, 2009 Order of Merit of the State of Berlin
• 2009 Unity Award - Citizens' Award for German Unity from the Federal Agency for Civic Education in the Culture category - Profile of Unity awarded to the Robert Havemann Society for the open-air exhibition "Peaceful Revolution 1989/90".
• 2013 Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon

Publications

• with Gerold Hildebrand: Against the repression in your own head. A cheerful slaughter of old taboos on the occasion of the 5th anniversary of the great non-socialist October Revolution (Wende). Reader for the opposition conference on November 5, 1994 in the House of Democracy . Robert Havemann Society, Berlin 1995.
• with Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk (Hrsg.): For a free country with free people. Opposition and Resistance in Biographies and Photos. Robert Havemann Society, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-938857-02-1 .
• with Matthias Buchholz, Walter Schmitz & Andreas Schönfelder (eds.): Samizdat in Central Europe. Thelem, Dresden 2007.
• “We are the people!” Magazine for the exhibition Peaceful Revolution 1989/90. Berlin: Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH, Berlin 2009.
• Youth opposition in the GDR. Berlin 2010 (DVD)
• with Antonia Kausch (ed.): Faces of the peaceful revolution. Photographs by Dirk Vogel. With an essay by Claudia Rusch . Robert Havemann Society, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-938857-10-6

literature

• Ehrhart Neubert : History of the Opposition in the GDR 1949-1989 , Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-86153-163-1 .
• Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk : Endgame. The 1989 revolution in the GDR. Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-58357-5 .
• Arno Polzin:  Sello, Wolfram ("Tom") . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

• Wolfram Sello in the chronicle of the turning point
• Short biography of Sellos on Jugendopposition.de
• Page no longer available , search in web archives: short biography on the website of the archive of the GDR opposition
• Erich and the "debaters"
• Karlen Vesper: From someone who went out to fight for democracy , in: ND of November 30, 2009.
• Sven Felix Kellerhoff : How it could come to November 9, 1989 , in: Die Welt from May 18, 2009.
• Open-air exhibition Peaceful Revolution 1989/90 Review
• Open-air exhibition Peaceful Revolution 1989/90
• Antje Lang-Lendor: The almost forgotten prison on the Alex , in: taz from December 20, 2011.

Interviews

• Jonas Großmann: “Bumble through or get up?” , Interview with Tom Sello, in: Schekker. das Jugendmagazin, No. 73 (October 2009), topic: 20 Years of Peaceful Revolution. People.
• Civil rights activist over 30 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall: “I don't like simple explanations” Tom Sello in an interview with Uwe Rada, In: www.taz.de, March 3, 2019

Individual evidence

1. ^ Open-air exhibition Peaceful Revolution 1989/90 Retrospect , viewed on July 1, 2011.
2. ↑ Tom Sello protests against air pollution and environmental destruction on a bicycle demonstration Interview on jugendopposition.de , viewed on March 2, 2017.
3. ↑ Flyer against the Military Service Act on jugendopposition.de , viewed on March 2, 2017.
4. ↑ one day: Erich and the "Discussiers" , sighted on June 22, 2011.
5. ↑ Fehrbelliner Straße 7 , viewed on July 1, 2011.
6. ↑ Erik de Graaf: De Stasi en de vredescontacten tussen Oost en West (The Stasi and the Peace Contacts between East and West)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ( MS Word ; 37 kB), in: VeeDee AMOK - Journal for Antimilitarism and Conscientious Objection, Volume 1 (1992), No. 2, viewed on June 22, 2011.  
7. ^ "Hungary rejected" and final rejection by the head of the Passport and Registration Department , viewed on July 1, 2011.
8. ↑ Tom Sello in September 1989 on the premises of the Berlin Zionsgemeinde with various samizdat publications , viewed on July 1, 2011.
9. ↑ See Bundesstiftung Aufverarbeitung: Technical Advisory Boards ( Memento of the original from March 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , viewed June 10, 2011. 
10. ↑ Press release of the Berlin Senate on Sello's election , viewed on December 12, 2017.
11. ↑ Grimme Online Award 2005 ( Memento of the original dated December 2, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 23, 2011. 
12. ↑ See Berlin.de Rathaus aktuell: Wowereit awarded the Berlin State Order to deserving women and men ( memento of the original from September 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 14, 2011.
13. ↑ Prize Winner 2009 ( Memento of the original from August 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , viewed July 1, 2011. 
14. ↑ Communication from the Office of the Federal President , accessed on October 4, 2013