Working group on human rights

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Poster for the first public event in Leipzig

The Human Rights Working Group Leipzig (1986–1989) had set itself the task of making violations of human rights in the GDR public and, in view of unrealized human rights, to make them public (short forms: AG Menschenrechte , AGM or AGM Leipzig ).

Political method of legalistic subversion

With membership of the UN, the government of the GDR recognized the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , and in the CSCE process even more extensive civil liberties. From this external representation of the GDR state, the subversive human rights groups drew the yardstick for assessing internal conditions. "Despite their small number - the MfS counted ten groups across the GDR in 1988 - the human rights groups contributed significantly to the politicization of the opposition" and to the formation of the civil rights movement.

The groups were able to defend themselves against the accusation of active public hostility by pointing out that GDR citizens should be allowed to believe that the GDR government did not want to deliberately deceive the world public. The method is based - in Kant's enlightenment sense - on the (false) assumption of a government that is benevolent to the citizen in order to be able to criticize the real existing conditions legally. In this way it was possible to deal aggressively with fellow travelers, sympathizers and beneficiaries of the despotism of the Stalinist state class.

History 1986 to 1989

In September 1986, had Steffen Gresch to his apartment in Leipzig to a reading by Peter Grimm of the Initiative for Peace and Human Rights invited (Berlin). Following this, Andrea Stefan, Beate Schade, Steffen Gresch, Oliver Kloß and others discussed the establishment of a subversive group with Pastor Christoph Wonneberger ( Lukasgemeinde Leipzig ), who was also present . Following the example of Charter 77, this was supposed to make violations of human rights in the GDR and the Eastern Bloc public.

The application for admission to the Leipzig Synodal Committee soon required an official name. In view of the small number of founding members, taking over the name of Georg Büchner's “Society for Human Rights” could have appeared presumptuous, so in December 1986 the simple name “Working Group Human Rights” was agreed .

With the event “The Human Right Freedom of Expression in Discussion”, the Human Rights Working Group turned to the public for the first time in May 1987. After that, the number of participants rose sharply. So found Frank Richter , Susann Labitzke, Christoph Screwery, Steffen Kühhirt, Dagmar Böhme, Kathrin Walther , Johannes Fischer, André Engelhardt, Rainer Müller and others to the group.

From the autumn of 1987, the Human Rights Working Group campaigned for a social peace service as an alternative to both armed military service and uniformed construction soldiers . Pastor Christoph Wonneberger had already made this demand for recognition of a civilian alternative service known to the public during his time at the Weinbergskirche in Dresden .

The AG Human Rights worked in this sense also that of Heiko Lietz moderated and the Samaritan Church in Berlin organized "DDR-wide labor and coordination group for military service problem" of "peace concretely" with, represented by Oliver lump , Steffen Kühhirt, Christoph Screwery, Frank Richter and Uwe Szynkowski.

Elected speakers 1989: Johannes Fischer, Steffen Kühhirt and Frank Richter .

The community library of the Lukasgemeinde surprised the visitors with a contribution to the human right to freedom of information. It offered a growing stock of literature that could not be read in GDR state libraries (or only with official permission "for scientific use") and even samizdat writings from organized artistic and political resistance from several Eastern Bloc countries.

In 1988 the Working Group on Human Rights and the Leipzig Justice Working Group promoted the establishment of the national “Working Group on the Situation of Human Rights in the GDR” . On the day of human rights , on December 10th, 1988, their call for founding appeared with contact addresses from Jena to Güstrow . In cooperation with the Leipzig Justice Working Group , information and samizdat literature was created and illegally reproduced. The "Leipziger Chronik", which began in the samizdat documentation "Die Mücke" in 1989 and was later supplemented, offers an overview of the density of events and disputes with the state apparatus and church leaders in the last years of the GDR.

In close cooperation with the conspiratorially structured working group Gerechtigkeit Leipzig , the Human Rights Working Group organized the “Statt-Kirchentag” in 1989 in the Lukaskirche with international participation in addition to the official Kirchentag. Partly documented in the samizdat "Forum for Church and Human Rights".

The Human Rights Working Group was one of the three subversive groups in Leipzig that resolved the appeal for non-violence for the decisive October 9, 1989, distributed it as a leaflet and read it out in the churches in the inner city.

After the successful mass demonstrations in October 1989, the alliance of organized resistance against the GDR state disintegrated. The goal was achieved, the rapid success perhaps surprised the actors most: The path to the rule of law and pluralistic parliamentarism of a market-based economic order was for the time being irreversible from November.

So the way to state unification was open, because what would have further justified the existence of the state?

Employees of the AG Human Rights worked in various organizations of the civil rights movement as well as in the newly founded parties. The Human Rights Working Group ceased its work in November 1989; The majority of those involved joined the former model organization Initiative Peace and Human Rights , which had also been founded in Leipzig .

literature

  • Jiří Pelikán , Manfred Wilke (ed.): Human rights. A yearbook on Eastern Europe. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1977.
  • Uwe Koch / Stephan Eschler (Eds.): Clench your teeth up high. Documents on conscientious objection in the GDR 1962-1990. Scheunen-Verlag, Kückenshagen 1994, ISBN 3-929370-14-X .
  • Thomas Rudolph in an interview in 1990 and 1992. In: Hagen Findeis, Detlef Pollack , Manuel Schilling: Die Entzauberung des Politischen. What happened to the politically alternative groups in the GDR? Interviews with former leading representatives. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 1994, ISBN 3-374-01522-0 , pp. 192–205.
  • Hartmut Elsenhans : Rise and Fall of Real Socialism. Some political and economic remarks. In: COMPARATIV - Leipzig Contributions to Universal History and Comparative Social Research , Issue 1, 1998, 8th year, Universitätsverlag Leipzig, pp. 122–132.
  • Reinhard Bernhof : The Leipzig protocols. projekte verlag, Halle 2004.
  • The Saxon State Commissioner for the Documents of the State Security Service of the former GDR (Ed.): Aufbruch 89. The peaceful revolution in Saxony. Revised new edition of the exhibition catalog 10 Years of Peaceful Revolution - A Path of Remembrance. Dresden 2004.
  • Hermann Geyer: Nikolaikirche, Mondays at five: the political services of the time of the fall in Leipzig. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2007 (University of Leipzig, Habil.-Schr. 2006), ISBN 978-3-534-18482-8 , table of contents .
  • Thomas Rudolph , Oliver Kloss , Rainer Müller , Christoph Wonneberger (ed. On behalf of the IFM archive): Way in the uprising. Chronicle of opposition and resistance in the GDR from August 1987 to December 1989. Vol. 1. Araki Verlag, Leipzig 2014, ISBN 978-3-941848-17-7 , esp. Part III, p. 321 ff.
  • Frank Richter : We are so free. The »Human Rights Working Group«. In: Andreas Peter Pausch: Resist - Pastor Christoph Wonneberger . Metropol, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86331-184-1 , pp. 189-195.
  • Thomas Mayer: Who doesn't give up. Christoph Wonneberger - a biography . Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2014, ISBN 978-3-374-03733-9 .
  • Peter Wensierski : The uncanny ease of the revolution. How a group of young people from Leipzig dared to rebel in the GDR. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-421-04751-9 . [At the center of this representation is only the Leipzig Initiative Group Life (IGL) , but people from other groups of the subversive scene were also included in the plot.]

Web links

Commons : Working group on human rights  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Television documentary

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinhard Weißhuhn : Human Rights in the GDR , in: Gabriele von Arnim / Volkmar Deile / Franz-Josef Hutter, Sabine Kurtenbach and Carsten Tessmer (eds.) In connection with Amnesty international / Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institut (Vienna) and Institute for Development und Frieden (Duisburg): Jahrbuch der Menschenrechte 1999 , Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, ​​pp. 247–269, p. 165.
  2. ↑ See Beate Wolf, b. What a shame, as a contemporary witness in an interview on Deutschlandradio Kultur on November 7, 2019.
  3. ↑ Human Rights Working Group: Material for the event "I am so free ... The human right of freedom of expression in conversation" on May 24, 1987.
  4. ↑ Human rights working group: Proposal for the establishment of a civil alternative service: SOCIAL PEACE SERVICE , leaflet, November 1987, reproduction of the Ormig hectography .
  5. ↑ See e.g. B. Oliver Kloss : Contribution to the discussion on the military service problem , in: Forum for Church and Human Rights , No. 2 (1989), edited by the Human Rights Working Group in cooperation with the Leipzig Justice Working Group, Samizdat, pp. 4-14.
  6. ↑ Municipal library of the Lukasgemeinde in Leipzig: Library regulations of April 3, 1989.
  7. ↑ Cf. Forum for Church and Human Rights No. 1 and 2 (1989), published by the Human Rights Working Group of the Lukaskirchgemeinde Leipzig-Volkmarsdorf in cooperation with the Justice Working Group, Leipzig, Samizdat.
  8. ↑ Justice Working Group / Human Rights Working Group / Environmental Protection Working Group : Appeal of organized resistance to nonviolence on October 9, 1989 and Frank Richter: Introduction on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Nikolaikirche's peace prayer to the historical leaflet "Appeal of October 9, 1989" .