Wolfgang Templin

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Wolfgang Templin (2015)

Wolfgang Templin (born November 25, 1948 in Jena ) is a German GDR civil rights activist and publicist .

Life

education and study

Templin grew up in the GDR and after graduating from high school in 1965, he began an apprenticeship as a printer, which he was unable to finish. From 1966 to 1968 he learned the profession of library worker and then attended until 1970 training in information and documentation at the college for library science in East Berlin .

From 1970 Templin completed a philosophy degree at the Humboldt University in Berlin , which he graduated in 1974. In 1970 he joined the SED and became FDJ secretary. From January 1973 until his deliberate deconspiracy in October 1975 Templin worked as IME "Peter" for the Ministry for State Security . During his voluntary exposure to a student discussion group, he gave comprehensive information about the type and scope of his unofficial activity. After completing his studies, he began his dissertation as a research student at the HU-Berlin. There he took part in illegal Trotskyist student circles. From 1976 to 1977 he studied at the University of Warsaw and made first contacts with the Polish opposition, such as the Committee for the Defense of Workers (KOR). From 1977 to 1983 he worked at the Central Institute for Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR and participated in the work of independent church-related peace and human rights groups. As a result, he was unable to complete his doctorate , which is why he left the SED in 1983 after his release from the Central Institute. He lost his job, was banned from working as a philosopher and librarian and in the meantime worked as a cleaner, forest worker and stoker.

Working in the unification process

Wolfgang Templin (2008)

In 1985 he co-founded the human rights group Initiative Peace and Human Rights (IFM), which carried out protests against human rights violations. He was co-editor of the samizdat magazine Grenzfall . Several times he made his apartment available for meetings of GDR critics and dissidents and kept in contact with various opposition groups. He was monitored by the state security and subjected to decomposition measures. The MfS initiated the "traitor" operation against Templin in order to put him under psychological pressure. The married Templin was confronted, among other things, with requests for an ad allegedly placed by him, as well as "maintenance claims" with regard to an illegitimate child allegedly conceived by him. On January 25, 1988, he was arrested as a participant in protest actions as part of the Liebknecht-Luxemburg demonstration in Berlin with his wife Lotte and other members of the opposition such as Bärbel Bohley , Stephan Krawczyk and Freya Klier for "treasonous agent activity" and was sent to the Federal Republic of Germany forced, where he began further studies in Bochum .

After the Peaceful Revolution he went back to the GDR and took part in the round table for the IFM and was its spokesman. He was also a member of the editorial advisory board of the newspaper die other , project employee of the DGB and employee of the Volkskammer faction Bündnis 90 . He ran for the Bundestag in 1990 on the North Rhine-Westphalian state list of the Greens . In 1991 he was one of the founders of the Bündnis 90 party . In 1996 he was struck off as a member of the Greens.

Life after the 1989 revolution

From 1994 to 1996 he worked as a press and public relations officer in the house at Checkpoint Charlie and then as a freelance journalist and employee in adult political education. He published several publications on GDR history, the German unification process and current developments in Central and Eastern Europe and participated in the international opposition handbook "Lexicon of Dissidents" of the Polish organization Karta and the Robert Havemann Society . When he wrote for the right-wing Junge Freiheit , the state committee of the Berlin Greens asked him to leave the party.

Templin is a founding member of the citizen's office for dealing with consequential damage caused by the SED dictatorship and a member of the Green Academy at the Heinrich Böll Foundation . He was also a member of the board of directors of the memorial library in honor of the victims of communism in Berlin. Since 2001 he has worked on the project “Central and Eastern Europe” (MOE) and worked on the study trip program of the Federal Agency for Civic Education . In 2001, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall, he protested against the cooperation between the SPD and PDS in Berlin. In contrast to other ex-civil rights activists from the GDR, Templin considered the use of the term “Monday demonstrations” in connection with the protests against the Hartz reforms of the federal government to be legitimate. As a freelance author he wrote a. a. for the time , the Tagesspiegel and the Frankfurter Rundschau . In 2009 he took part in the play vom Resistance at the Hans-Otto-Theater in Potsdam .

Wolfgang Templin was a research assistant at the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR and was office manager of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Warsaw from July 2010 to December 2013 .

Honors

Works (selection)

  • Play of colors. Ukraine after the revolution in orange . fiber, Osnabrück 2007, ISBN 978-3-938400-22-7
  • Trident and Red Star. History Politics and Historical Memory in Ukraine (with Christiane Schubert). Metropol-Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-86331-232-9
  • The fight for Poland. The adventurous history of the Second Polish Republic 1918–1939 . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2018, ISBN 978-3-506-78757-6

literature

Web links

Commons : Wolfgang Templin  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ehrhart Neubert : History of the opposition in the GDR 1949–1989 . Bonn 2000, p. 322.
  2. ^ Ehrhart Neubert : History of the opposition in the GDR 1949–1989 . P. 598 and 605.
  3. ↑ The Traitor Files . In: Die Zeit , No. 11/1992
  4. ↑ Christian Wernicke: "Process on"! Insight into a decomposed life . About the MfS operative case “traitor” against Wolfgang Templin. In: Die Zeit , No. 11/1992.
  5. ↑ press release. In: Neues Deutschland , January 26, 1988.
  6. ↑ Chronicle of the year 1988 . Youth opposition in the GDR
  7. ^ Declaration by members of former GDR opposition groups: "We protest against Hartz IV" from August 29, 2004
  8. ^ Wolfgang Templin new head of the Warsaw office. July 22, 2010.
  9. ↑ New office manager of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Warsaw: Irene Hahn-Fuhr from February 24, 2014.
  10. ^ Farewell as head of the Warsaw office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation on January 24, 2014 at the German Embassy in Warsaw
  11. ^ Annual Meeting of the German-Polish Societies. German-Polish calendar
  12. ↑ Wolfgang Templin receives Polish medal of gratitude. In: Mercury . September 3, 2010, archived from the original on September 3, 2010 ; Retrieved September 3, 2010 .
  13. ↑ Invitation to the 2015 Viadrina Prize. European University Viadrina , March 10, 2015, accessed on March 11, 2010 .
  14. ↑ Awarded the Berlin State Order. In: Berlin.de. Press and Information Office of the State of Berlin, September 27, 2018, accessed on September 28, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Templin, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German civil rights activist and GDR opposition activist
DATE OF BIRTH November 25, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH Jena