Solidarity Church working group

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The Solidarity Church Working Group (AKSK) was an organization within the East German Protestant churches. A large part of its members belonged to the citizens' movement in the GDR and played a key role in shaping the turning point and peaceful revolution in the GDR . It was officially founded on October 7, 1986 in Berlin-Karlshorst . When it was founded, the working group had 60 members; in 1989 it had around 300 members. After reunification there was an unsuccessful attempt to organize the working group for all of Germany.

Foundation and organization

The idea for the formation of the AKSK was developed by vicars in the winter of 1984/85 at the Wittenberg Predigerseminar. After several supraregional preparatory meetings, a six-monthly cycle was found for the general assemblies. This ecclesiastical opposition network met around the national holidays on May 1st and October 7th for two days, alternating between Berlin and another city. This alliance under the heading “Solidarity” within the Evangelical Church had two sources. On the one hand, the founders of the AKSK were fascinated by the political reforms that were triggered by Solidarność , and on the other by the realization that something like a union was needed for church workers. The ongoing topic of the general assemblies and the academies until 1989 was the relationship between church positions and political reforms in the GDR. In the basic declaration of October 1986 it says: “Due to personal experiences in church and society we suffer from a deficit of solidarity on different levels.” From this it was concluded that “the congregations come of age” within the church and vis-à-vis the state the social references of belief must be brought up "unprotected". Ulrich Stockmann , member of the first coordination committee, formulated the goal as follows: “The AKSK should strengthen the capacity for self-criticism in our church and the will for its structural change; He should help that the social area and the understanding of the law in our country is reconstructed by a critical public, and that an alternative culture of dealing with one another emerges among us. ”In the basic declaration it said u. a .:

  • "We see the special responsibility of Christians for action that promotes reconciliation."
  • “Human rights are indivisible. We are looking for a public dialogue with all social forces in order to promote the implementation of human rights near and far. "
  • "We call for a process of joint opinion and decision-making in order to participate in the above-mentioned tasks." "What we strive for for the church and society, we want to implement in the AKSK as a model."

This could be thought of as internal church processes, as it was said with a slight irony in the first issue of the solidary church : The AKSK has " consecrated its flags to the renewal of the old mother church " and with a lot of imagination it runs "against the highly institutionalized windmill wheels of the church" . But the unofficial employee of the MfS Ibrahim Böhme said a few days after it was founded: "The AKSK organization will, I estimate, still cause us a lot of worry." In a party information from the State Security from 1988 it was stated that "the ambitions within the church are very little pronounced ”, in fact the actions of the AKSK are directed“ in massive form against the social conditions in the GDR and its political foundations ”. Many members understood the AKSK as a social project of practicing and networking solidarity in church and society. In this sense, the AKSK cooperated with the Peace and Human Rights Initiative and with the Church from below , supported the initiative Rejection of the principle and practice of demarcation and campaigned for a positive appreciation of the emigration movement in church and society. The coordination committee was in charge of the working group. The AKSK worked on site with varying degrees of intensity in regional groups. Since many members of the AKSK were also involved in other groups, the regional groups also contributed to networking in the regions. As an independent institution, the summer and winter academies emerged under the direction of Ulrich Stockmann and Wolfram Tschiche .

Coordination committee

The joint coordination committee consisted of ten members elected by the general assembly for two years. For reasons of efficiency, these mostly came from Berlin. To him belong u. a .: Britta Albrecht, Janet Berchner, Marianne Birthler , Dorothea Höck , Joachim Goertz (today St. Bartholomew Church (Berlin) ), Martin König, Uwe Lehmann, Peter Mansfeld, Christian Sachse , Heidi Schade, Bettina Schirge, Birgit Schuster , Ulrich Stockmann, Lothar Tautz , Christoph Tannert and Dörte Wernick .

Conflict point

The internal church disputes taken up by the AKSK concerned both questions of the way of life, especially in connection with homosexual partnerships and partnerships without a marriage license, as well as disciplining church workers who worked with oppositional artists (e.g. Freya Klier and Stephan Krawczyk ). This resulted in a point of conflict that could be called by church workers under the direction of Herbert Schneider ( Huy-Neinstedt ) and Bernd Oehler. The general assembly passed the following escalation procedure for the accompaniment in disputes under service law: solid documentation, confidential confrontation, clarifying discussion, public communication, supportive letter from members of the AKSK to the refusing conflict party, report to the general assembly, resolutions. Eduard Stapel, who later became the spokesman for the Lesbian and Gay Association in Germany, was a member of the AKSK for many years.

Regional groups

There were the following regional groups: Greifswald , Malchin , Stargard , Potsdam , Berlin , Magdeburg , Halle - Merseburg , Zeitz , Naumburg (Saale) , Anhalt , Weissenfels , Hoyerswerda - Spremberg , Dresden and Leipzig . Some of these groups worked together regionally. Particularly noteworthy is the Thuringia regional group, which went public with poster campaigns and resolutions from 1988/89.

Members magazine

There were circular letters from the coordinating committee between plenary sessions. The Naumburg regional group ( Christian Dietrich , Michael Kleim, Andreas Schaller) published the first samizdat edition in March 1987 . The Leipzig regional group published two more (Katrin Drohberg, Bernd Oehler, Nikolaus Voss , Harald Wagner) in 1988 and 1989.

AKSK academies

Three AKSK academy conferences took place (July 25-30 , 1988 in Samswegen ; January 7-11 , 1989 in Darlingerode and July 1989 in Stuer-Winkel ). It was attended by founders of the AKSK such as Ludwig Mehlhorn and Wolfgang Templin , as well as members of the Peace and Human Rights Initiative ( Bärbel Bohley , Werner Fischer ) as well as guests from science and the civil rights movement. Conference topics were mainly political philosophy (especially Hannah Arendt and the history of communism). Some of the presentations were published in samizdat. Wolfram Tschiche continued the series of summer academies on his own responsibility.

In the peaceful revolution

“In the exciting autumn of 1989, many representatives of the Solidarity Church played an outstanding role.” However, the AKSK hardly appeared as a subject during the fall of the Berlin Wall and peaceful revolution . Many of its members were also involved in civil rights groups and the parties that were being formed. The formation of parties and the assumption of government responsibility were topics at the summer and winter academies. At the 1989 summer academy, the project of a social democratic party was discussed and asked whether there was a “GDR identity”. To relax, the participants played GDR government in the evening, not realizing that some of the players would become ministers ( Gerd Poppe ), party chairman ( Ibrahim Böhme ) or professional politicians ( Ulrich Stockmann ) just a few weeks later . At the end of 1988 the AKSK had declared that it would not take part in the GDR local elections. In many places, however, the AKSK was responsible for monitoring elections and networking the results. In the spring of 1989 the AKSK organized “300 times 12.00 marks for a peace grant” (Christian Sachse). With this scholarship, Ulrike Poppe was able to get financial support for her political work from autumn 1989. For the general assembly in Magdeburg on October 6th to 8th, 1989, many members did not arrive or left on October 7th because they were involved in the founding of the SDP or in political events on the evening of October 7th. The invitation to this conference was held under the motto “Democracy Spätlese”. As a guest, Adam Krzemiński reported on the Polish experience following the Solidarność election victory. At the conference, an electoral alliance of the citizens' movement and the SDP founded at the same time were discussed for the first time.

During and after German reunification

When it was decided to only allow political parties to vote in the 1990 elections, the AKSK campaigned for citizens' movements to be allowed. The general assembly in May 1990 in Jena called for a "disclosure of the past" of the churches in the GDR. With this in mind, a working group “Entanglements” was formed, which later became part of the “Law and Reconciliation Initiative”. The AKSK advocated a regular review of all church mandate holders “for Stasi cooperation”. In June 1991, with the participation of West German Christians, especially from Marburg , an “Initiative Solidarity Church in Germany” was formed. It supported the model experiment of lifestyle-ethics-religious studies in place of denominational religious instruction, but found no form of establishing itself. The Thuringian regional group of the AKSK acted as a church political group until the end of the 1990s.

literature

  • Joachim Goertz (Ed.): The Solidarity Church in the GDR. Experiences - memories - realizations. Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-86163-099-0 .
  • Erhard Neubert : History of the opposition in the GDR 1949–1989. 2000.
  • Peter Maser : Working Group Solidarity Church (AKSK). In: Hans-Joachim Veen (Hrsg.): Lexicon of opposition and resistance in the SED dictatorship. 2000, pp. 52-53.
  • Henning Pietzsch: Youth between Church and State: History of Church Youth Work in Jena 1970-1989 , 2005.
  • Thomas Rudolph , Oliver Kloss , Rainer Müller , Christoph Wonneberger (ed. On behalf of the IFM-Archivs eV): Way in the uprising. Chronicle on opposition and resistance in the GDR from August 1987 to December 1989. Leipzig, Araki, 2014, ISBN 978-3-941848-17-7 , preface as a reading sample for download.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joachim Goertz: Church, groups, state - three areas of conflict of the Solidarity Church. In: Goertz (Ed.): The Solidarity Church in the GDR , 1999, pp. 159–188
  2. ↑ basic statement reprinted in Joachim Goertz (ed.): The Solidarity Church in the GDR , Berlin 1999, pp 190-193.
  3. ↑ Ulrich Stockmann: So that solidarity and the church learn to kiss . In: solidarian church (sample number), p. 3
  4. ^ Nicolaus Voss, Institutionalized Thoughts from the IV General Assembly. In: solidarian church (sample number), p. 7
  5. ^ Peter Maser: Working Group Solidarity Church (AKSK) . In: Hans-Joachim Veen (ed.), Lexicon Opposition and Resistance in the SED dictatorship , 2000, 52f., P. 52
  6. ^ Thomas A. Seidel: Thuringian Way and Thuringian Initiative. A regional group of the Solidarity Church at the end of the GDR. In: Joachim Goertz (Ed.): The Solidarity Church in the GDR , pp. 35–54, 44.
  7. ↑ Dorothea Höck: Acting together in solidarity. Cooperation in the opposition using the example of AKSK and the group “Rejection of Practice and Principle of Demarcation” . In: Joachim Goertz (Ed.): The Solidarity Church in the GDR , pp. 55–70.
  8. ^ Thomas A. Seidel: Thuringian Way and Thuringian Initiative. A regional group of the Solidarity Church at the end of the GDR. In: Joachim Goertz (Ed.): The Solidarity Church in the GDR , pp. 35–54; Lothar Tautz: “The city is looking for the best” - but where? The solidary church and the emigration problem in Weißenfels . In: ibid., 71-82; Letter from the AKSK to the Eisenach regional church council against the discrimination against pastor R. Weidner who is willing to leave the country on June 21, 1989, in: ibid., P. 242.
  9. ^ GDR history: My teacher, the Stasi pastor on berliner-kurier.de , online, accessed on April 1, 2017
  10. ↑ Photo in: Christoph Victor: Oktoberfrühling. Die Wende in Weimar , 2nd edition, 2009, p. 168. See also Thomas A. Seidel: Thüringer Weg and Thüringer Initiative. A regional group of the Solidarity Church at the end of the GDR. In: Joachim Goertz (Ed.): The Solidarity Church in the GDR , pp. 35–54 and the interviews with Katrin Göring-Eckardt , Hartmut Fichtmüller, Uta and Gotthard Lemke and others in the same volume.
  11. ^ Ulrich Stockmann: Summer and Winter Academy of the AKSK. In: Joachim Goertz (Ed.): The Solidarity Church in the GDR , pp. 178–180.
  12. ↑ Wolfram Tschiche, Politics in the Mirror of the Present : Fates, Controversies, Perspectives; Texts from the 4th Summer Academy July 11-19, 1991, 1991
  13. ↑ Ehrhard Neubert: The Solidarity Church as part of the GDR opposition , in: Joachim Goertz (Ed.): The Solidarity Church in the GDR , pp. 27–33, 33.
  14. ↑ Joachim Goertz: Church, groups, state - three areas of conflict of the Solidarity Church . In: Joachim Goertz (Ed.): The Solidarity Church in the GDR , pp. 159–188.
  15. ↑ Markus Meckel: On the resurgence of social democracy in East Germany on the Internet at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation [1] (PDF; 180 kB)
  16. ↑ Dorothea Höck: Acting together in solidarity. Cooperation in the opposition using the example of AKSK and the group “Rejection of Practice and Principle of Demarcation” . In: Joachim Goertz (Ed.): The Solidarity Church in the GDR , pp. 55–70.
  17. ↑ Hans Michael Kloth: From "Zettelfalten" to free voting , 2000, p. 244
  18. ↑ Document 35 of January 19, 1990. In: Joachim Goertz (Ed.): The Solidarity Church in the GDR , pp. 250f.
  19. ↑ Press release by Martin Pöttner ( Alzey ) of May 12, 1992. In: Joachim Goertz (Ed.): The Solidarity Church in the GDR , p. 264f.