Fritz Reuter working group

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The Fritz Reuter working group in the Kulturbund of the GDR was a regional interest group in the three northern districts of Rostock , Schwerin and Neubrandenburg to maintain the legacy of the Low German writer Fritz Reuter . It only lasted a very short time. The working group, which had its seat at the district secretariat of the Kulturbund in Neubrandenburg, was founded on May 28th, 1989 in Güstrow and dissolved immediately after the end of the GDR . The last 44 working group members joined the Fritz Reuter Society eV, founded in Lübeck in 1960, individually in September 1990 . This has been based in Neubrandenburg since 1991. The members were scientists, artists, cultural workers, literary propagandists and a few "other Reuter friends". The unspoken intention behind the founding was to establish a GDR counterpart to the literary society in the West.

founding

Several years of preparation preceded the establishment of the working group. Initial considerations resulted from the German-German cultural agreement signed on May 6, 1986, which enabled cultural exchange, cultural cooperation and partnerships across the border. Such cooperation with the Low Germans in the north of the GDR was subsequently promoted primarily by the Lübeck Reuter Society. Following the example of other western literary societies that had their namesake in the eastern part of Germany, the Reuter Society now also aimed to meet members in the GDR. However, on the other hand, she lacked a partner in the form of a Reuter company from the GDR. In Neubrandenburg, Rostock and Schwerin, the founding of such an institution was recognized as an opportunity to achieve more travel options to the west. While retirees from the GDR drove unmolested to the annual Reuter Days of the Lübeck Society, museum people, scientists and other Reuter experts in government services were mostly barred from such excursions.

The initiators of the working group included Arnold Hückstädt , the then director of the Fritz Reuter Literature Museum in Stavenhagen, the Schwerin writer Jürgen Borchert and the editor of the Rostock Hinstorff publishing house, Wolfgang Müns . The patron of the founding meeting in May 1989 in the ballroom of Güstrow Castle was the then Deputy Minister for Culture, Klaus Höpcke . In Güstrow, the working group adopted “guiding principles” for its work (“requirements and objectives”, “mode of operation”, “membership”, “management”).

aims

The founding of the working group, it was said in the guiding principles, “represents a way of getting citizens interested in Fritz Reuter and his literary environment to become active in the maintenance of socialist heritage”. The working group represents and deepens "the positions of Marxist-Leninist literary studies on the life, work and impact of the bourgeois-humanist national author Fritz Reuter". Were provided u. a. "Standard-setting" literary events, offers of literary materials, promoting influence on regional and national publication activities as well as stimulating literary-historical research. A Fritz Reuter plaque of honor, which would have corresponded to the letter of honor of the Lübeck Fritz Reuter Society, was to be donated for services to the care of the Reuters heritage and the Low German language and literature.

The working group should be open to all natural and legal persons "who advocated the realization of the basic tasks of the cultural association and the guiding principles". The annual contribution was set at 20 GDR marks, and 100 GDR marks for collectives and institutions. As usual in the Fritz Reuter Society, the members should receive annual donations. The working group was led by a chairman with two deputies. The board consisted of a total of 15 members, five from each district. In Güstrow Arnold Hückstädt (Neubrandenburg) were elected as chairman, Jürgen Borchert (Schwerin) and Anna-Margarete Zdrenka (Rostock) as deputies. In addition to Kulturbund employees, the board also included scientists from the universities of Rostock and Greifswald .

The Lübeck Fritz Reuter Society sent the working group for the foundation in Güstrow a greeting address with the following content: “The Fritz Reuter Society Lübeck welcomes your initiative to found the Fritz Reuter working group and sends all participants in the founding meeting the best and most sincere wishes for a fruitful one Act. We are pleased that a new center is being formed in Fritz Reuter's homeland, which would like to give due recognition to the efforts of this poet, his work, his human commitment and his commitment to the Low German language and literature. May the new working group be successful in Reuter's homeland, in the whole of Low German and beyond on the international scale that is appropriate to Reuter. With our wishes for good success, we hope for good cooperation in the unifying goal of spreading Reuter's legacy and image of man more effectively. Let us consider together which new ways can be laid out and paved. "

Stasi influence

In 1990 it became public that the working group was "in the clutches" of the State Security . The Neubrandenburger Zeitung Nordkurier wrote: “In the update of the situation of Department XX for the year 1989, the 'Regional Fritz Reuter Working Group' appears as a new 'focus'. The background was as follows: When it was founded, as can be seen from the update of the situation, it was an 'alternative to the Fritz-Reuter-Gesellschaft Lübeck'. Contacts between members of the Fritz Reuter working group and the 'Reuter Society Lübeck' were considered 'not permitted'. When the Reuter-Gesellschaft Lübeck sent a greeting to the founding, the content of which was assessed by the MfS as 'without operational relevance', the Stasi intervened in the course of the founding event. It says in the relevant documents: 'An operational influence of Department XX, that this greeting address ... is not read out, is guaranteed.' "

The aforementioned “operational influence” is explained in a letter from the Rostock MfS district administration addressed to the Stasi district administration in Neubrandenburg and the Berlin MfS headquarters on May 24, 1989, five days before the founding meeting: “At the instigation of the management of the working group, the 1. Secretaries of the district managements of the Kulturbund der 3 Nordbezirke measures initiated so that further greetings from GDR partners are available on May 28, 1989. This is to prevent reading out the greeting address of the eV. " The greeting addresses requested by " GDR partners " came from the VEB Hinstorff Verlag Rostock, the Kulturbund district societies Heimatgeschichte und Denkmalpflege Neubrandenburg, the Mecklenburg Folklore Center (MFZ) Rostock and the Rostock Volkstheater .

The Rostock MFZ, which officially welcomed the founding of the Reuter working group in its greeting address and addressed the working group as “another allied partner in the acquisition and dissemination of literary heritage” , had previously tried to prevent the working group from being established. However, not in an open dispute, but conspiratorially with funds from the Stasi. The state institution MFZ, also committed to teaching and promoting literature, saw the Kulturbund initiative as an undesirable competitor. With the express reference to its source IME "Monika Turm", the Stasi district administration Rostock, Department XX, wrote a four-page "operational information " on April 12, 1989 about the "politically and substantively unjustified necessity" of founding the working group. The unofficial employee on a special mission “Monika Turm” was identified as the head of the MFZ at the end of the 1990s. In 1989, the MFZ management was in the hands of Marion Schmidt. In the operational information, the founders of the working group were reproached for "considerable political deficiencies in terms of content" during preparation, the guiding principles for the working group, which are formulated "imprecise in terms of content" , would make "political orientation" more difficult, the function and tasks of the working group would "decentralize state influences" favor. The final recommendation was: “It is proposed that, in order to guarantee the central political leadership and management of the processes in the maintenance of the Low German heritage, taking into account specific interests, in the preservation and preservation of the literary heritage of Fritz Reuter, all related tasks continue to be under the direction of To leave the Mecklenburg Folklore Center of the three northern districts. "

The Rostock district administration asked the Berlin Stasi headquarters in a letter dated April 20, 1989, five and a half weeks before the founding meeting on May 28, 1989 in Güstrow, “to influence the preventive prevention of the formation of a 'Fritz Reuter' working group” . The answer from Berlin was: "not feasible" . In its letter of May 18, 1989, the Stasi headquarters referred to a decision at the highest party level: “The above-mentioned working group was formed in a personal agreement between the member of the Politburo and Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED, Comrade Prof. Kurt Hager , and the 1st Vice President of the Kulturbund der GDR, Gen. Prof. Karl-Heinz Schulmeister , who was entrusted with the implementation of this task, was determined. "

resolution

About the time that followed the founding of the Reuter working group in the spring of 1989, Chairman Dr. Arnold Hückstädt, looking back in July 1990, in a press conference: “There was the summer break and then in autumn the revolutionary upheaval in our country. Reuter got out of our field of vision. ”At the beginning of 1990 the working group broke away from the Kulturbund. Hückstädt: “At a board meeting in Güstrow in mid-March we passed the resolution to rename the working group to the Fritz-Reuter-Gesellschaft Stavenhagen eV. Firstly, we followed the trend, founded an independent association, and secondly, with Stavenhagen, we wanted ours Clearly name the seat in the GDR. At that time, we still had the intention of profiling ourselves as an independent company. ”However, the company could no longer be entered in the register of associations. Hückstädt: "The ongoing development towards a unified Germany makes it seem absurd to continue to have two Reuter companies, especially since our beginnings are rather modest compared to the 30 years of development in Lübeck." With their first and only event, a Reuter Day in Dömitz in August 1990, the Stavenhagener Gesellschaft said goodbye to the public.

The first efforts to found a Reuter company in Fritz Reuter's home country had been made forty years earlier. In the state newspaper for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania of November 8, 1946, the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state management of the Kulturbund published a “call for the establishment of a Fritz Reuter Fund and the establishment of a Fritz Reuter Society”. It said: “The national leadership of the Kulturbund calls on all democratic organizations in our country to form a Fritz Reuter Society from their midst and a Fritz Reuter Fund from their resources, whose main task will have to be Reuter's birthplace in Stavenhagen to make a Fritz Reuter memorial site. "

The Fritz Reuter Literature Archive Hans-Joachim Griephan Berlin has extensive documentation and material collection on the Fritz Reuter working group.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nordkurier, Neubrandenburg, from April 28, 1990.
  2. ^ BStU, MfS, Rostock district administration, I 767/88. Vol. II, Bl. 234-235.
  3. ^ BStU, MfS, Rostock district administration, I 767/88. Vol. II, Bl. 224-227.
  4. ↑ Focus, No. 45, November 2, 1998, page 114.
  5. ↑ Mein Mecklenburg - The magazine for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania No. 1 (2015), p. 49.
  6. ↑ Nordkurier, Neubrandenburg, from July 25, 1990.