Christian Dietrich (pastor)

Christian Dietrich (born September 21, 1965 in Jena ) is a German Protestant pastor . He was a representative of the civil rights movement in the GDR and until 2018 the State Commissioner of the Free State of Thuringia to come to terms with the SED dictatorship.

Live and act

Christian Dietrich was denied the state high school diploma for political reasons. He then attended the Church Proseminar in Naumburg from 1982 to 1985 . Since 1981 he has participated in actions of the church resistance of the young community and the evangelical student community Naumburg. In 1983 his family applied for an exit visa . After he withdrew it in 1986, he began to study theology in Naumburg and later in Leipzig and Marburg . He belonged to the Naumburg Peace Working Group and the Germany Political Working Group around Edelbert Richter . He took part in the initiative for non-alignment in Europe and called for the death penalty to be abolished in the GDR. In 1986 he founded the GDR-wide working group Solidarity Church with a large number of Protestant civil rights activists . In coordination with the Peace and Human Rights Initiative , he developed contacts with dissidents in Prague and Budapest. He was the author of various cultural and political samizdat magazines and co-editor of Ostkreuz and Glasnot . With U. a. Ibrahim Böhme and the pastor Lothar König he organized seminars on the history of Stalinism . He also led a working group on nonviolent resistance and took part in the organization of opposition demonstrations in Naumburg and Leipzig. In March 1989 he founded the initiative for democratic renewal with Katrin Hattenhauer , Gesine Oltmanns and Michael Arnold , which called for a demonstration against the 'pseudo-elections' on May 7, 1989 and announced an archive of the resistance. He was arrested several times for participating in demonstrations. At the Monday demonstration in Leipzig on September 4, 1989, he carried a banner with the words freedom of assembly and association . The attempt by the State Security to arrest Dietrich on the sidelines of the Monday demonstration on September 18 failed because of the solidarity of the bystanders.

The Ministry of State Security pursued him under the Operational Case "Candle". In autumn 1989 he took part in the development of the structures of the New Forum and the Democratic Awakening . He was its managing director and chairman of the committee of inquiry into corruption and abuse of office in the Naumburg district. In 1991 he was co-founder and for a long time on the board of directors of the Leipzig Citizens Movement Archive and the Association for Civic Education in Saxony, Round Table Foundation . He campaigned for an "Archive German Unity", which resulted in the Leipzig Contemporary History Forum . In 1992 he passed his first theological exam in Naumburg and became an employee at the Institute for Contemporary Church History in Naumburg and repetent at the Naumburg Church University. For the German Evangelical Church Congress in 1997, he created an exhibition on the Leipzig Church Days in the Museum Memorial in the "Round Corner" under the motto " 1954 - Happy in hope , 1978 patient in tribulation, 1989 Hold on to prayer". In 1997 he became vicar in Oberweißbach and Scheibe-Alsbach . From 2000 to 2013 he was pastor in Nohra with the locations Mönchenholzhausen , Bechstedtstraß , Isseroda and Troistedt , and in 2019 in Klettbach . He worked on the EKD paper on the “Church in Rural Areas”. In November 2013 he was elected by the Thuringian state parliament for five years as the state commissioner of the Free State of Thuringia to come to terms with the SED dictatorship . Dietrich is married and has four children.

Political positions

Christian Dietrich is a member of the Evangelical Brotherhood of St. George's Order . In 2006 Dietrich signed the “Appeal for Press Freedom” of the weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit against its exclusion from the Leipzig Book Fair . In 2018 he signed the "Joint Declaration on Chemnitz" against the attempt by right-wing populist groups to take over the legacy of the Peaceful Revolution , and in 2019 he signed the protest for Gregor Gysi's planned speech on the 30th anniversary of the East German revolution in Leipzig of more than 700 civil rights activists from a broad political spectrum. September 2019 he received the " Golden Hen for Politics " for his democratic resistance , awarded by the MDR , rbb and NDR.

Fonts

• "What was going on in Leipzig?" Samizdat , early 1989.
• "Forty Romanian Years in the Report". In: OSTKREUZ 1/1989.
• Central Europe in us . In: GLASNOT 1989.
• Europe was far away , to Katrin Hattenhauer. In: Second person 1/1990
• (with Uwe Schwabe as ed.): Friends and enemies . Documents on the prayers for peace in Leipzig, 1994 [3] .
• The protest is forming ... On the development of the opposition in the GDR in the 80s. In: Bernd Lindner (Ed.): For an open country with free people , 1994, pp. 38–52.
• Case study Leipzig 1987 - 1989 . The politically alternative groups in Leipzig before the revolution. In: Enquete Commission processing of the history and consequences of the SED dictatorship in Germany , Volume VII / 1, 1995, pp. 602–666 [4] .
• The concept of non-violence and the peaceful end of the GDR . In: Gestrich, Andreas / Niedhart, Gottfried / Ulrich, Bernd (ed.): Nonviolence. Pacifist concepts in the 19th and 20th centuries (Yearbook for Historical Peace Research, Vol. 5), 1996, pp. 151–164.
• Roland Jahn . In: Walter Jahn, you are like poison. Memories of a father, Erfurt 1996.
• (with Martin Jander ): The expansion to the mass protest in Saxony and Thuringia . In: Eberhard Kuhrt and others (eds.), Opposition in the GDR from the 1970s to the collapse of SED rule , 1999, pp. 737–786.
• The creation of the work “Inner Mission and Aid Organization of the Evangelical Churches in the GDR” and the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR . In: Jochen-Christoph Kaiser and Ingolf Hübner (eds.), Diakonie in divided Germany , 1999, pp. 103–116.
• The establishment of the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR in 1968/69 , in: Thomas A. Seidel (Ed.), Godless Years? Review of the Church in Socialism in the GDR, 2002, pp. 23–34.
• Editor of the 2nd revised edition October Spring . The turning point in Weimar (Weimarer Schriften - Issue 49), 2009.
• In the run-up to the peaceful revolution - The importance of the Protestant student community. In: Raimund Hoenen u. a. (Ed.): Catechetical Oberseminar - Kirchliche Hochschule Naumburg (Saale) 1949–1993 , 2009, pp. 44–48.
• It burned in our conscience - Oskar Brüsewitz and the formation of consciences in the GDR . In: Mariano Delgado , Volker Leppin , David Neuhold (eds.), Wrestling for Truth : Conflicts of Conscience in the History of Christianity, 2011, pp. 369–398.
• Jiri Dienstbier no longer lives with The Axis of the Good [5] .
• The Weimar Working Group, the Eastern CDU and the Thuringian Way of the Protestant Church . In: epd -Documentation 20/2012, pp. 38–53.
• Franz Böhm : Freedom and order , in: Christian Dietrich (ed.): 'FOR EDELBERT RICHTER - FREUNDESGABE on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of birth and baptism', Weimar 2013, pp. 63–72.
• Revolution and Church in the GDR: Political Change from a Church Perspective , in: Ronald Lutz (ed.), Doron Kiesel (ed.): Religion and Politics , Frankfurt / New York 2015, pp. 155–183.
• The political mandate of Christians or the church in dictatorship and the memory of guilt and failure , in: Completed? Status and consequences of dealing with the history of the church in the GDR . Conference at the Theological Faculty of Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, June 12-13, 2015. 2015, issue 40
• Those who were forcibly resettled within the GDR should not be forgotten . Study by the state commissioner to come to terms with the SED dictatorship, Erfurt 2018 [6]
• State representative for coming to terms with the SED dictatorship (ed.): 'Expulsions in Communism'. Forced Migration as an Instrument of Communist Politics, Halle 2019

literature

• Short biography for:  Dietrich, Christian . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Hermann Geyer: Nikolaikirche, Mondays at five. The political services of the turning point in Leipzig. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2007, ISBN 978-3-534-18482-8 .
• Hans Michael Kloth: From "folding paper" to free voting. The democratization of the GDR in 1989/90 and the “election question”. Links, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-86153-212-3 (also: Lüneburg, Universität, Dissertation, 1999).
• Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk (Hrsg.): Freedom and public. Political samizdat in the GDR 1985–1989. A documentation (= series of publications of the Robert Havemann Archive. Vol. 7). Robert Havemann Society, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-9804920-6-0 .
• Hannes Langbein: Culture Church Isseroda. In: Petra Bahr , Klaus-Martin Bresgott, Hannes Langbein: Kulturkirche. A trip through Germany. Evangelische Verlags-Anstalt, Leipzig 2011, ISBN 978-3-374-02906-8 , pp. 184-187.
• Doris Liebermann , Jürgen Fuchs , Vlasta Wallat (eds.): Dissidents, presidents and greengrocers. Czech and East German dissidents 1968–1998 (= publications by the Institute for Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe. Vol. 11). Klartext-Verlag, Essen 1998, ISBN 3-88474-678-2 .
• Ehrhart Neubert : History of the opposition in the GDR. 1949–1989 (= Federal Agency for Political Education. Series of publications. 346). 2nd, revised, expanded and corrected edition. Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 2000, ISBN 3-89331-294-3 (also: Berlin, University, dissertation, 1997).
• Karsten Timmer: From departure to change. The citizens' movement in the GDR 1989 (= critical studies on historical science . Vol. 142). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-525-35925-X (also: Bielefeld, University, dissertation, 1999).
• Reinhard Weißhuhn : Christian Dietrich. In: Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, Tom Sello (ed.): For a free country with free people. Opposition and Resistance in Biographies and Photos. Robert Havemann Society, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-938857-02-1 , p. 233 ff.
• PM Hoffmann and Bernd Lindner : Autumn of the decision. A story from the Peaceful Revolution of 1989 . Graphic novel, Berlin 2014
• 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 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Christian Dietrich in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ C. Dietrich: AEIOU In: Festschrift for Edelbert Richter 1987 and in: KOMMUNE 10/1987, pp. 32–35; Christian Domnitz: European imaginary worlds in the Eastern Bloc . In: Europe in the Eastern Bloc : Ideas and Discourses (1945–1991), 2008, pp. 61–82; Rainer Eckert : Opposition, Resistance and the German Question 1972–1988 . In: Andreas H. Apelt, Martin Gutzeit , Gerd Poppe (eds.): The German Question in the Soviet Zone and the GDR , 2010, pp. 111–118, 117; Herbert Ammon: Annus mirabilis 1989: On the pre- and post-history of an encounter at globokult
2. ↑ Death lurked in Leipzig . In: ideaSektrum ideaOst July 25, 2007, p. 3
3. ↑ Joachim Goertz (Ed.): The Solidarity Church in the GDR , 1999
4. ^ C. Dietrich: Initiative for the democratic renewal of the Leipzig society . In: Hans-Joachim Veen (ed.), Lexicon Opposition and Resistance in the SED-Dictatorship , 2000, p. 186. A copy of the founding appeal was Appendix 3 of the Stasi announcement to the SED Politburo about the formation of GDR-wide oppositionists Groups from September 19, 1989 [1] ; Erhard Neubert, Our Revolution, 2009, 293.
5. ↑ Christian Dietrich and Uwe Schwabe (eds.): FRIENDS AND FEINDE. Prayers for peace in Leipzig between 1981 and October 9, 1989. Documentation. (PDF file; 3.91 MB) p. 401, note 630.
6. ↑ Deutschlandradio interview May 25, 2011 ; Minutes of the 14th meeting of the Enquete Commission on the processing and history and consequences of the SED dictatorship in Germany, In: Dies. (Ed.), Materials Vol. IX, 1995, pp. 120-324, 123f.
7. ^ Christian Dietrich: The Rose Valley. Place of the largest mass event of German Protestantism . In: WALDSTRASSENVIERTEL No. 10, 1997, pp. 25-27. The exhibition is part of the museum in the round corner.
8. ↑ EKD texts 87 "Change and design" [2] (PDF file; 203 kB)
9. ↑ Website of the authority State Commissioner of the Free State of Thuringia to come to terms with the SED dictatorship (ThLA)
10. ↑ KAS. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; accessed on July 4, 2019 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  
11. ↑ nz: Celebrities stand up for “Young Freedom”. Archived from the original on January 13, 2014 ; accessed on January 2, 2013 (in Netzeitung , February 7, 2006). 
12. ↑ Charter 2017 - an appeal for freedom of opinion and art . In: Conservo . October 19, 2017 ( wordpress.com [accessed November 28, 2018]).
13. ↑ 17.02.06 / Thank you! / A victory for freedom of the press / JUNGE FREIHEIT prevails. Retrieved July 1, 2019 . 
14. ^ GDR civil rights activists against those who instrumentalize Chemnitz crimes for inhuman propaganda. Accessed July 3, 2019
15. ^ Open letter on the appearance of Gregor Gysi on the 30th anniversary of the Peaceful Revolution at Robert Havemann Gesellschaft, accessed on July 3, 2019
16. ↑ Honoring four Leipzig civil rights activists in a gala by Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, MDR, rbb and NDR in: Leipziger Volkszeitung, accessed on September 20, 2019