Leipzig Justice Working Group

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Nonviolence appeal for the decisive Monday demonstration on October 9, 1989

The Gerechtigkeit Leipzig working group (1987–1989) was founded by students and visiting students from the Theological Seminary in Leipzig , but from the beginning it was supposed to have an impact beyond the church and organize and motivate people regardless of their interpretation of the world. He had set himself the task of opposing the GDR state , which did not allow a republican public, as a conspiratorially organized subversive group in order to demand civil and human rights with offensive public relations work and ultimately to work towards overcoming the anti-freedom form of rule of the Stalinist state class. (Short forms: AK Gerechtigkeit , AKG Leipzig , AK G or AKG ).

Political method: conspiratorial structure and subversive public relations

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 civil and human rights groups drew the yardstick for assessing internal relationships. The models for the Justice Working Group were Charter 77 and, in the GDR, the Berlin Peace and Human Rights Initiative . "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 the Enlightenment sense of Immanuel Kant - 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.

In the sense of Immanuel Kant's enlightenment , the conspiratorial group formation serves the legitimate “natural occupation of man” in those states where the “freedom of the pen” does not exist and a “spirit of freedom” is lacking, which supports the reasonable debate about the legality of the coercive laws of the state allow. As soon as the republican form of government of a constitutional state was achieved, the conspiracy would lose its legitimacy.

History 1987 to 1989

Founding members: Jochen Läßig, Bernd Oehler , Thomas Rudolph and Frank Wolfgang Sonntag .

“The Justice Working Group was founded at the end of 1987 by students from the Theological Seminary in Leipzig with the aim of influencing the political development of the GDR. Therefore, he attached particular importance to broad public relations. He gave himself a constitution and a structure. The independently working thematic working groups (for example public relations, disabled people, emigration, anti-nuclear) were each represented by one or one delegate in the group of speakers, paying attention to gender equality. [...] Fixed rules forbade connections to the Ministry of State Security , stipulated the obligation to notify the State Security of knowledgeable attempts to contact them and regulated the behavior of the members during interrogations. [...]
Ecclesiastical and independent samizdat publications served public relations work, for example 'Forum for Church and Human Rights' (published with the Human Rights Working Group ), 'The New Green Party' (published with the Justice and Environment Working Group ), 'VARIA' as material on the political repression in Czechoslovakia and a sheet for corresponding members. Texts and reports by Czech and Slovak dissidents were translated and published in Leipzig. A variety of relationships were maintained with opposition groups in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and the Baltic States. Intensive contacts existed with the editorial offices of church and independent newspapers as well as with representatives of peace, environmental and human rights libraries. Monthly meetings were held with them and representatives of human rights groups from September 1988 to March 1990. [...]
Information on human rights violations, on government strategies in dealing with those wishing to leave the country and on developments within the power apparatus and the SED were collected and disseminated. The Justice Working Group owned non-licensed wax matrix transfer devices with which it could produce leaflets and publications as well as provide technical assistance for foreign opposition groups (e.g. Zwickau, Dresden). "

Jochen Läßig explains in an interview in 1990:

“In this new group, which mainly consisted of theology students and people from church circles, Thomas Rudolph started a very consistent work. [...] The Justice Working Group was one of the front groups. At the beginning there were maybe 10 people, but young people between 20 and 28 years of age. Most of them ran the contact office that coordinated all peace prayers in the GDR. That is, information was passed from one peace prayer to another and the current status of the state's detentions and investigations was disseminated. The main goal was to build an information network within the GDR [...]. The contact telephone was almost a full-time occupation. It went uninterrupted because incidents had to be reported all over the GDR, which then became known to the public and which could be countered through protest. "

The Justice Working Group was involved in the Leipzig-East District Synodal Committee and in the organization of prayers for peace in the Nikolaikirche. He campaigned for the creation of a “communication center for grassroots groups and parishes” in Leipzig based on the model of the Berlin “environmental library”. 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 AK Gerechtigkeit and the Human Rights Working Group promoted the institutionalization of the Saturday Circle and the resultant establishment of the nationwide working "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 .

Thomas Rudolph , one of the co-founders, broke off his theology studies in November 1988 in order to be able to devote himself fully to political work in the AK Gerechtigkeit . From the income from samizdat publications sold and donations, Kathrin Walther , Rainer Müller and later Frank Richter from the human rights working group were also employed by the subversive group as “full-time revolutionaries”, so to speak. (This became possible because the criminal prosecution of people who evaded the state's compulsory labor, the notorious § 249 StGB of the GDR, had been suspended from 1987.)

In cooperation with the Human Rights Working Group (Leipzig), information and samizdat literature were created and illegally reproduced. The "Leipziger Chronik", which began in the samizdat documentation "Die Mücke" in 1989 and was later supplemented, already offered an overview of the density of events and disputes with the state apparatus and church leaders in the last years of the GDR.

Working closely with Pastor Christoph Wonneberger and the AG Human Rights organized by the Working Group Justice in addition to the official Church Congress to "take-Kirchentag" 1989 in Lukas community Leipzig Volkmarsdorf with international participation, eg. Partly documented in the samizdat "Forum for Church and Human Rights".

The AK Gerechtigkeit 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 quick success perhaps surprised the actors the most: The path to the rule of law and pluralistic parliamentarism of a market-based economic order was temporarily irreversible from the end of October.

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

Employees of the AK Gerechtigkeit worked in various organizations of the civil rights movement as well as in the newly founded parties. The AK Gerechtigkeit ceased its work in November 1989. The majority of those involved joined the former model organization Initiative Peace and Human Rights, which had already been founded in Saxony, or were founding members of Saxony.

speaker

The speakers and the coordination group included:

Katrin Hattenhauer , Jochen Läßig, Rainer Müller , Bernd Oehler , Gesine Oltmanns, Doreen Penno, Thomas Rudolph and Kathrin Walther .

In the event that several spokespersons were arrested, additional persons were named in advance who would also work in the coordination group:

Joachim Förster, Silke Krasulsky , Susanne Krug and Andreas Ludwig.

Other employees in the coordination group:

Babette Kohlbach and Frank Wolfgang Sonntag (from the end of July 1988 spokesman for the AKG in West Berlin).

Doreen Penno (born 1965), spokeswoman for the working group on departure , was revealed in July 1989 as being in the service of the State Security (later her internal MfS name became known: IMB “Maria” ).

literature

  • Thomas Rudolph , Oliver Kloss , Rainer Müller , Christoph Wonneberger (ed. On behalf of the IFM-Archivs eV): Way in the uprising. Chronicle of opposition and resistance in the GDR from August 1987 to December 1989. Vol. 1, Leipzig, Araki, 2014, ISBN 978-3-941848-17-7 , pp. 279–319.
  • Kathrin Mahler Walther : You can stand, but crouch slightly. On the upright walk of Christoph Wonneberger , in: Pausch, Andreas Peter: Resistance - Pastor Christoph Wonneberger , Berlin, Metropol, 2014, ISBN 978-3-86331-184-1 , pp. 189–195.
  • Interview with Thomas Rudolph 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, Leipzig, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1994, ISBN 3-374-01522-0 , pp. 192–205.
  • Hermann Geyer: Nikolaikirche, Mondays at five: the political services of the time of the fall in Leipzig . Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007 (University of Leipzig, Habil.-Schr. 2006), ISBN 978-3-534-18482-8 , table of contents .
  • Jiří Pelikán / Manfred Wilke (eds.): Human rights. A yearbook on Eastern Europe , Reinbek near Hamburg, Rowohlt, 1977.
  • Thomas Mayer: Who doesn't give up. Christoph Wonneberger - a biography . Leipzig, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 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. Munich, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2017, ISBN 978-3-421-04751-9 . [The Leipzig Initiativgruppe Leben (IGL) is at the center of the presentation , but people from the AKG were also included in the plot.]

Web links

Commons : Arbeitskreis Gerechtigkeit Leipzig  - 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 , Suhrkamp, ​​pp. 247–269, p. 165.
  2. ↑ Cf. Immanuel Kant: About the common saying: That may be correct in theory, but is not suitable for practice , in: ders .: Of the dreams of reason. Small writings on art, philosophy, history and politics , Leipzig / Weimar, Kiepenheuer, 1979, pp. 341–392.
  3. ↑ Thomas Rudolph / Rainer Müller / Kathrin Walther : Arbeitskreis Gerechtigkeit Leipzig - Brief description on the occasion of the exhibition for the tenth anniversary of the 1989 revolution in the Runden Ecke , Leipzig, 1997.
  4. ↑ Jochen Läßig 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, Leipzig, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1994, ISBN 3-374-01522-0 , pp. 127-141, pp. 128 f.
  5. ↑ 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.
  6. ↑ Justice Working Group / Human Rights Working Group / Environmental Protection Working Group : Appeal of the organized resistance to non-violence 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" .
  7. ↑ See Thomas Rudolph / Oliver Kloss / Rainer Müller / Christoph Wonneberger (eds.): Way in the uprising. Chronicle of opposition and resistance in the GDR from August 1987 to December 1989. Vol. 1, Leipzig, Araki Verlag, 2014, pp. 281–284.