Carl-Wolfgang Holzapfel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Carl-Wolfgang Holzapfel (born April 10, 1944 in Bad Landeck , Lower Silesia ) is a German political activist. He became known for his resistance and protest against the Berlin Wall .

Life

Holzapfel grew up in West Berlin . He attended school in Berlin-Zehlendorf . In 1958 he graduated from the home school in Kerstlingerode near Göttingen . As an adolescent, Holzapfel already dealt with the resistance against National Socialism . The Hungarian uprising in 1956 triggered the "emotional impulse" for active resistance at Holzapfel. At the age of 13, after "disastrous impressions" from the uprising in Hungary, he wrote a play about Budlap's fight against Kremlowski . At the age of 14 (1958) he wrote a Germany paper in 60 articles and wanted to show ways to an international solution to the German question . Due to another home placement near Göttingen, publication by Arno Scholz , the editor of the Telegraf in Berlin, failed .

After the Wall was built in August 1961, Holzapfel returned to Berlin from Hamburg and since then has demonstrated non-violently against the Berlin Wall until it fell. He publicly criticized the order to shoot (firearms regulation of the GDR), and Holzapfel campaigned for German reunification . On October 2, 1962, he began a 72-hour sit-down and hunger strike in Berlin in the area of ​​Hussitenstrasse and the corner of Bernauer Strasse, opposite the Church of Reconciliation , to demonstrate against the Berlin Wall. Holzapfel was sent off by West Berlin police officers and taken to the police station on Ackerstrasse. However, Holzapfel was able to continue his hunger strike at 10 p.m. at the Lehrter train station at the memorial stone for Günter Litfin . After fatal attempts to escape, Holzapfel spontaneously erected several wooden crosses on the wall with friends, for example for Paul Schultz , who was shot on December 25, 1963 near the Thomas Church on Mariannenplatz in Kreuzberg . Together with Dieter Wycisk, he carried out a ten-day hunger strike there in freezing temperatures in order to persuade the UN to intervene “against the murders on the Wall”.

In 1964 Holzapfel began to demonstrate against the Berlin Wall with poster campaigns. After one of his demonstrations for the release of political prisoners, he was arrested at Checkpoint Charlie in 1965 by border guards from the GDR and sentenced to eight years in prison in April 1966 in the East Berlin city court in Littenstrasse . After several months of solitary confinement , he was transferred to the Bautzen correctional facility . At the end of October 1966 he was ransomed by the Federal Republic of Germany . From 1970 to 1973, after moving to Bavaria, he completed an apprenticeship as a savings bank clerk and then worked as a banker .

Holzapfel later continued his protest against the imprisonment of political prisoners in the GDR and against the Berlin Wall in the area of ​​the Berlin sector border. On August 13, 1989, Holzapfel lay across the famous "white line" at Checkpoint Charlie , which marked the border between East and West. This spectacular demonstration lasted over three hours until the Americans and the Soviets had agreed on how to proceed.

After the introduction of monetary union , Holzapfel worked on behalf of his bank in Eisenach to build up the bank's infrastructure there. In August 1990 Holzapfel went to Berlin and began an indefinite hunger strike in front of the GDR Ministry of Justice in order to persuade the then Minister of Justice, Kurt Wünsche, to resign, which he did after six days.

With a nine-day hunger strike in front of the Ministry of Finance at the corner of Leipziger Strasse and Wilhelmstrasse, Holzapfel protested in vain in June 2005 against the removal of the memorial plaques from the facades of the Ministry, which commemorated June 17, 1953 . Since then there has been a call for the name to be changed to “Platz des 17. Juni”.

At the end of October 2009 he moved into a prison cell in the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen memorial for a protest and art campaign, the project “24/7 Stasi Live Detention” . Holzapfel planned to spend a week in a three by four meter cell, accompanied by a webcam . However, he broke off the action prematurely. The reason for this he cited was the “emotional burden” as well as the criticism of the action and quarrels about his process of being excluded from a victim association.

In Strausberg , on June 17, 2011, he pasted over street signs on Hennickendorfer Chaussee with the inscription “Strasse des 17. Juni”; the resulting proceedings for presumption and damage to property were discontinued in 2012.

Holzapfel now lives with his partner, the former Hohenecker Tatjana Sterneberg , and has lived in Berlin again after 38 years in Bavaria.

Political commitment

In 1961 he became a member of the Junge Union in Hamburg and a year later a member of the CDU Berlin . From 1978 to 2005 Holzapfel was a member of various parties and groups. In 1972 he became a member of the FDP Bavaria ; In 1982 he left the company. From 1989 to 1990 Holzapfel was a brief member of The Republicans party ; He later referred to this as "error" and "interlude". In 1998 he joined the CSU as a member ; from which he left again in 2005 for family reasons. From 1992 to 2008 he was a member of the völkisch - right-wing extremist Sudeten German Witikobund .

From 1963 Holzapfel was a member of the Vereinigung Vereinigung June 17, 1953 . The organization Vereinigung 17. Juni 1953 eV deals with the documentation and processing of the SED dictatorship and commemorates its victims. Holzapfel was chairman of the association from 2002 to 2019 and has been honorary chairman since June 17, 2019. Holzapfel defends himself against a capture of the victims of June 17th by the NPD .

In 1974 he was a founding member of the Fourth Party Action Group in Stuttgart. In 1990 he co-founded the organization “ HELP - Aid Organization Formerly Politically Persecuted in Europe ” in Berlin and was its president until 1993.

In 2008 he became deputy federal chairman of the Association of Victims of Stalinism (VOS); In July 2009 he resigned as Deputy Federal Chairman of the VOS. The board of directors of the VOS subsequently tried to expel Holzapfel. In decisions of July 2010 and January 2012, the Charlottenburg District Court rejected the exclusion of Holzapfel as ineffective. Holzapfel announced his resignation from the Association of Victims of Stalinism (VOS) at the end of 2015.

In 2010 he published obituaries for Emil Schlee and Eugene Bird . In connection with Hess, in 2010 he again published the appeal “Maintaining Hess imprisonment unworthy of our age” from 1967. He wanted to emphasize that at that time he was not committed to his release for ideological reasons, but “for purely humanitarian reasons alongside many well-known personalities”.

Fonts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Carl-Wolfgang Holzapfel ( Memento from November 26, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Vita ( The Free World ; last accessed on May 17, 2012)
  2. ↑ a b c d e C.-W. Holzapfel - Biographical Notes ( Memento from March 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Berliner Mauer.de ; last accessed on May 17, 2012
  3. ↑ a b c Wall demonstrator Holzapfel - Hunger strike ( Memento from March 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Video and photo, Berliner Mauer.de ; last accessed on May 17, 2012
  4. ↑ a b c d Former Stasi prisoner has moved into his cell in: Berliner Morgenpost from October 29, 2009
  5. ↑ a b c "Second Class Victims" Interview with Carl-Wolfgang Holzapfel in: Junge Freiheit, July 1, 2005
  6. ↑ see also Feindbilder , DVD / Part 9, Federal Agency for Civic Education
  7. ↑ a b Only those who go to the barricades and protest ... Carl-Wolfgang Holzapfel's blog: Berlin Wall Demonstrator ; Entry from August 16, 2010
  8. ^ Köhler signs law on honorary pension for GDR ministers Official website of the association June 17, 1953 eV; Retrieved May 17, 2012
  9. ↑ Until the photos are back in: Berliner Zeitung of June 23, 2005
  10. ↑ a b "Stasiknast" campaign canceled in: Der Tagesspiegel from November 2, 2009
  11. ↑ ( page no longer available , search in web archives: video )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.youtube.com
  12. ↑ Legal dispute filed in: Märkische Oderzeitung dated February 2, 2012
  13. ↑ ASSOCIATION JUNE 17, 1953 eV The Board of Directors
  14. ↑ "Initial spark for all of Europe"  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in: Nordwest-Zeitung from June 17, 2010@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.nwzonline.de  
  15. ↑ http://www.mdr.de/exakt/neonazis110-download.pdf
  16. ↑ Holzapfel declares resignation from the federal board of the VOS press release of July 18, 2009
  17. ^ Judgment AG Charlottenburg: Holzapfel exclusion from the VOS again ineffective , communication of January 12, 2012
  18. ↑ http://17juni1953.wordpress.com/2010/09/08/patriot-konservativ-umstritten-zum-tod-von-emil-schlee/
  19. ↑ http://17juni1953.wordpress.com/2010/0e2/17/zum-tode-von-eugen-k-bird/
  20. ↑ http://17juni1953.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/historie-nambeispiel-personitäten-unterschreiben-endung/
personal data
SURNAME Holzapfel, Carl-Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political activist
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Landeck , Silesia