Andreas Buro

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Andreas Buro (born on August 15, 1928 in Berlin ; died on January 19, 2016 in Grävenwiesbach ) was a German political scientist and an influential figure in the peace movement from the late 1950s until his death . Furthermore, from the late 1960s onwards he influenced the human and civil rights movements of his time and, as a co-founder of the Socialist Bureau and the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy, the undogmatic New Left in the Federal Republic.

From 1980 he taught as a professor for international politics at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main . Since the 1990s, one of his priorities has been peace and conflict research , in particular the development of civil, by analogy, non-military solution strategies for international conflicts ( civil conflict management ). In 2008 - a few weeks after turning 80 - he was awarded the Aachen Peace Prize and, five years later, the Göttingen Peace Prize for his decades of peace policy work, primarily for his work in this area .

After his retirement , Buro was until the end of his life a member of the scientific advisory board of the International Doctors for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), an organization that received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 .

effect

Buro is considered to be one of the main intellectual supporters and spokesmen - initially of the West German peace and human rights movement after the Second World War, whereby the international networking of the relevant grassroots social movements was always important to him. At the supranational level, he co-founded the International Confederation for Disarmament and Peace (ICDP) as part of the Europe-wide campaign European Nuclear Disarmament (END) (1963), the Peace Brigades International (pbi) (1981), the German section of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly (HCA), an amalgamation of civil and human rights groups from the OSCE states (1993), to the dialogue group for Turkish-Kurdish understanding and for a political solution to the Kurdish conflict (1995).

As early as the end of the 1950s, he was involved as a member of the International of Military Service Opponents (IDK) in extra-parliamentary resistance against nuclear armament in the country ( fight against atomic death ). In his successor, he was one of the initiators of the Easter march movement in the Federal Republic of Germany, which originally began in Great Britain . In the following decades, Buro actively campaigned for the goals of the peace movement at major events and congresses as well as journalistically until the end of his life : Among other things, in the 1960s against the Vietnam War , in the early 1980s against the so-called " retrofitting " with nuclear equipment Pershing II medium-range missiles and cruise missiles in Western Europe, 1999 against military intervention by NATO including the Bundeswehr in the Kosovo war , 2002/03 against the Iraq war .

In addition, Andreas Buro was co-initiator of the founding of the Socialist Bureau in 1969 . In this context he is also considered a representative of the undogmatic New Left in Germany. From 1978 to 1980 his role as one of the spokespersons for the Third Russell International Tribunal on the Situation of Human Rights in the Federal Republic (1978) as well as his role as co-founder of the Committee on Fundamental Rights and Democracy (1980) also contributed.

Biographical-political development

Youth and first degree (1928 to 1954)

Born in 1928, Andreas Buro spent his conscious childhood and youth during the dictatorship of National Socialism . At the age of 16 he was drafted as an " Luftwaffe helper" in 1944 and experienced the " total war " that Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels had called for in his Sportpalast speech the year before , in direct military action during the last months of the Second World War in Europe ; of the war that had been triggered by the German Reich in 1939 and which had its main arena in Germany itself from late autumn 1944 onwards. The experiences that Buro had to make in this last year of the war - especially when deployed as an anti-aircraft helper during the Battle of Berlin - contributed significantly to his later attitude of resolute pacifism and anti-militarism .

After the war, Buro worked as a forest worker for a few years. He made up his Abitur and studied forestry . In 1954 he received his doctorate with a doctoral thesis entitled Investigations into the decomposition of pine and beech wood by fungi that destroy wood and its influence through heat treatments and synthetic resin impregnation of the wood .

Commitment to peace politics 1955 to 1970

When the mid-1950s, during the first high phase of the Cold War, with the accession of the Federal Republic of Germany to the western military alliance of NATO and the founding of the Bundeswehr, a new (West) German army was enforced against the massive protests of the rearmament critics of the so-called Without Me movement Buro joined the pacifist organization Internationale der Kriegsdienstegoner (IdK), a German section of War Resisters' International (WRI). In the following years, as a member of this organization, he developed into a spokesman for the West German peace movement.

Initially, in the late 1950s, Buro was involved in the Fight against Nuclear Death campaign against equipping the Bundeswehr with nuclear weapons . In the early 1960s he was one of the key initiators of the first Easter marches in the Federal Republic. As executive spokesman for the Committee for the Campaign for Democracy and Disarmament , he built up the Easter march movement between 1965 and 1969. During these years he set a focus of the movement in the protests and actions against the Vietnam War , which was also taken up as one of the decisive topics by the extra-parliamentary opposition of the student movement . Buro's engagement was not limited to actions in the Federal Republic. He belonged to the German coordination body of the San Francisco-Moscow march for cross-bloc disarmament and was spokesman for the peace movement in the European anti-nuclear confederation .

During the high phase of the student movement, Buro completed a further course in political science from 1966, which he completed in 1969. In 1970 he was initially a lecturer and finally in 1980 a full professor of international politics at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main.

Socialist Office, Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy 1970–2000

After the decline of the student movement from 1968/69, Buro belonged to Klaus Vack , Eva Senghaas , Wolf-Dieter Narr and others in 1969 . a. on the co-founders of the Socialist Office (SB), which, with the magazine links , was to develop in the following years into an institution that gave impetus to the undogmatic New Left in Germany in both practical and theoretical areas . As a member of the SB Buro was involved, among other things, in the Angela Davis Congress of 1972, in the Chile Solidarity against the military coup in the South American country from 1973, and in 1978 as a spokesman for the Third International Russell Tribunal on the Human Rights Situation in of the Federal Republic .

In 1980 Buro played a leading role in founding the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy, along with other intellectuals from the SB environment . As a peace policy spokesman of the organization he belonged in the first half of the 1980s to the supporters and initiators of many large-scale demonstrations and actions of civil disobedience ( sit-ins against the NATO double-track decision, which the stationing of nuclear-armed and Others..) Pershing II - medium-range missiles in the Federal Republic Germany and cruise missiles (cruise missiles) provided for in the Federal Republic, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium.

After the decline in the movement against retrofitting and in view of the transformation of the Bundeswehr into an army that also began to take part in international combat missions, since the German reunification from the 1990s onwards , Buro has increasingly endeavored to develop alternative, i.e. H. civil and non-violent conflict resolution strategies also at the intergovernmental level. A major step in this direction was the establishment of a platform for civil conflict management . Buro continued to be a vehement critic of military options. At the end of the 1990s he also participated in resistance actions against the use of NATO in the war against Yugoslavia ( Kosovo War ). He organized vigils and demonstrations in front of military airfields in Germany, during which, for example, the soldiers were called on to refuse their deployment.

Peace research since 2000

The declaration of the war on terrorism by US President Bush in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 in the USA was the reason for the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy to resist this new quality of an international military escalation . Buro was the author of a petition for a collection of signatures to the German Bundestag "War must not be the answer to terror". After this petition was unsuccessful, the RESIST alliance was founded again in 2002 with the participation of Andreas Buro - resisting the war in Iraq , which in December of the same year organized the first major German demonstration against the (at the time still planned) Iraq war at the Rhein-Main Air Base near Frankfurt am Main .

In the course of the discussion about a European constitution in 2004, Buro was one of those who tried to draw the attention of the peace movement to the military innovations in this constitution. Criticized were, for example, the stipulation of possible worldwide EU combat missions, the expansion of the range of operations of a European army and an armament obligation for the individual states (Article I-41 of the EU constitution: "The member states undertake to gradually improve their military capabilities.") . Buro wrote the citizens' information sheet “EU militarization is destroying the civil power of Europe”, with which he opposed submission of politics to the point of view of military logic.

From 2006 onwards, in collaboration with the Alliance Cooperation for Peace , an association of around 40 organizations of the German peace movement that joined the Buro in 2004, he published the monitoring dossiers in which differentiated proposals for civil conflict management in certain international conflicts were elaborated are. Corresponding dossiers for the trouble spots Iran , Turkey / Kurdistan , Israel / Palestine (see Middle East conflict ) and Afghanistan (see War in Afghanistan since 2001 ) had been drawn up by 2008 . In these dossiers, Buro partly presented the results of its work on civil conflict management (as a sub-topic of peace research ) using a specific conflict example. Because of his work in this area, he was awarded the Aachen Peace Prize in 2008 alongside the Israeli women's peace organization Machsom Watch and the Palestinian pastor of the Christmas Church in Bethlehem , Mitri Raheb . In 2013 he was awarded the Göttingen Peace Prize for his "decades of extraordinary work for peace and the realization of human rights".

Andreas Buro died on January 19, 2016 at the age of 87 after a short, serious illness in his house in Grävenwiesbach im Taunus with his family.

Awards

Works / writings (selection)

  • Investigations into the degradation of pine and beech wood by wood-destroying fungi and its influence through heat treatments and synthetic resin impregnations of the wood , Springer, Berlin / Göttingen / Heidelberg 1954, DNB 480488576 (Dissertation University of Göttingen, Faculty of Forestry, July 29, 1954, 108 pages).
  • From commercial capitalism to contemporary neo-imperialism: an introduction to the development of bourgeois society , together with Leo Kofler ; Edited by the Socialist Office, Verlag 2000, Offenbach 1972.
  • Auto-centered development through democratization? Lessons from Vietnam and other third world countries . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-593-32840-2 (habilitation thesis University of Frankfurt 1979).
  • Between social-liberal disintegration and conservative rule - on the situation of the peace and protest movement at this time, Verlag 2000, Offenbach 1982, ISBN 3-88534-310-X .
  • Vietnam! Vietnam? The development of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam after the fall of Saigon , together with Karl Grobe , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-518-11197-3 .
  • 100 theses on peace and human rights, together with Wolf-Dieter Narr and Klaus Vack , ed .: Committee for Basic Rights and Democracy, Sensbachtal 1984, ISBN 3-88906-012-9 .
  • Wasn't the peace movement right? A reader on background, facts and connections to the Gulf War, with Roland Roth , Ed. Committee for Basic Rights and Democracy, Sensbachtal 1991, ISBN 3-88906-042-0 .
  • The dead live longer - the peace movement, from the East-West confrontation to civil conflict management , Komzi-Verlag, Idstein 1997, ISBN 3-929522-42-X .
  • The new NATO - instrument for enforcing western interests, with Wolf-Dieter Narr, Ed .: Committee for Basic Rights and Democracy, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-88906-080-3 .
  • War in the Balkans - Germany is back. Ed .: Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-88906-081-1 .
  • Pacifism by military means? Arguments against Minister of State Volmers Belli pacifism. Ed .: Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy, Cologne 2002, ISBN 3-88906-097-8 .
  • Israel - Palestine - violence without end or understanding and cooperation? Ed .: Committee for Basic Rights and Democracy, Cologne 2002, ISBN 3-88906-104-4 .
  • Citizens' information: EU militarization is destroying the “civil power Europe” with Volker Böge and Martin Singe ; Ed .: Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-88906-105-2 .
  • Documentation about the conference "The EU candidate Turkey and the Kurdish question". Documentation about the conference in the Berlin House of Representatives on June 11, 2004, with Mehmet Salin , Ed .: Dialog-Kreis “The time is ripe for a political solution in the conflict between Turks and Kurds”, Mithrsg. IPPNW, Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-933884-10-1 .
  • Stories from the peace movement - personal and political, as editor, together with other authors, Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-88906-114-1 .
  • The Turkish-Kurdish conflict (Monitoring Project, Dossier 2), Ed .: Cooperation for Peace, Bonn 2007.
  • The Afghanistan Conflict (Monitoring Project, Dossier 4), Ed .: Cooperation for Peace, Bonn 2008.
  • Nonviolent against war. Memoirs of a militant pacifist . Brandes & Apsel, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-86099-709-3 .

Web links

Individual primary texts available online by Andreas Buro

Evidence / Notes

  1. ^ Website of the German section of the IPPNW: The Scientific Advisory Board (subpage from www.ippnw.de, accessed on January 19, 2016)
  2. Wolfgang U. Eckart : History of Medicine , 6th edition Springer Medizin Verlag Heidelberg 2009, p. 330. ISBN 978-3-540-79215-4 .
  3. Volker Böge: Andreas Buro is 80 years old , Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy , August 7, 2008
  4. ^ "Mourning for Andreas Buro" - Obituary of the Fundamental Rights Committee of January 19, 2016
  5. Photograph of the winners of the Aachen Peace Prize 2008, left: Andreas Buro ( Memento of the original from June 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.aachener-friedenspreis.de
  6. On the award of the Göttingen Peace Prize 2013 to Andreas Buro (subpage www.goettinger-friedenspreis.de, accessed on January 19, 2016)