Erika Drees

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Erika Drees (born von Winterfeldt ; born September 15, 1935 in Breslau ; † January 11, 2009 in Stendal ) was a German civil rights activist, environmental and peace activist. She was a member of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War , the "BI Energiewende Stendal " and the citizens' initiative Open Heide .

Life

Memorial plaque on the house, Markt 1, in Stendal

Drees came from the family of the Prussian general Hans Karl von Winterfeldt and initially lived in Silesia as the daughter of a landowner . With the end of the Second World War , the family had to flee from Silesia. One of the siblings died while the mother and her five children were on the run from hardship. She was shaped by the traumatic escape experience. In the post-war period the family lived under difficult economic conditions in Schleswig-Holstein ; Drees was in the Carl Hunnius boarding school in Wyk auf Föhr from 1946 to 1950 .

At a young age she began to get involved in church peace work. Drees, a member of the Evangelical Church, campaigned for justice within society and was committed to environmental protection .

During her medical studies at the Free University in West Berlin got it in 1958 because of East-West contacts of the Protestant student community under suspicion of espionage and spent nine months in the GDR in custody . In 1996 she was rehabilitated.

Activity in the GDR

Drees moved to the medical school in 1960, she had her future husband the psychiatrist Ludwig Drees in Dresden met, according Bernburg in the GDR. She wanted to counteract the shortage of doctors there and also be able to help shape the system. In 1975 she moved to Stendal with her husband, their two sons and their daughter .

In 1979 she joined the church's political resistance. She was active in groups such as " Women for Peace ", " Peace in Practice ", " Ecumenical Assembly " and was one of the initiators of Chernobyl commemorations. She was particularly involved in the citizens' initiative Energiewende against the Stendal nuclear power plant, which was then under construction near Stendal . In the summer of 1987 she signed the political appeal “ One hope learns to walk , justice for people, peace for the people, liberation of creation”. The GDR demonstrated its commitment with several imprisonment and administrative sentences as well as surveillance by the Stasi . Professionally, she worked as a neurologist in the Stendal Polyclinic .

She also became known as the first signatory of the appeal “Aufbruch 89 - Neues Forum ” and the founding of the New Forum on September 9, 1989 in Grünheide (Mark) . Alongside her, Bärbel Bohley , Katja Havemann , Sebastian Pflugbeil and Hans-Jochen Tschiche were among the first to sign . The appeal initiated the political turnaround in the GDR.

Activity after reunification

During the Easter March 1991, which led from Magdeburg to Petersberg near Halle , she was hit by a driver near Bernburg who was unwilling to wait behind the demonstration and injured her leg. She then spent some time in the Bernburg Hospital . In September 1991, after the political turning point, she refused the Federal Cross of Merit offered “for her services to reunification” on the grounds that the East Germans had “only changed the cage” .

Even in reunified Germany, she continued to be committed in a consistent, non-violent but also radical form. Since then, she has received 11 more criminal cases that have returned her to prison. The criminal proceedings resulted from political actions in which she deliberately accepted trespassing in nuclear power plants or nuclear weapons storage facilities. Since she did not pay any fines that were imposed, she was given alternative custodial sentences . In 1999 she received the Solbach-Freise Foundation Prize for moral courage .

Her profession as a doctor, she had founded the social-psychiatric center in Stendal, she pursued until her retirement in 2000.

Trial in Cochem

The trial against Erika Drees on November 5, 2002 in Cochem became particularly well known . After she demonstratively broke into the Büchel nuclear weapons camp on April 7, 2002 to draw attention to the nuclear weapons stored there , she served a six-week prison sentence. The presiding judge Johann said in his verdict that it was particularly serious "that the defendants at an advanced age and with their previous convictions were bad role models for children and grandchildren".

burial

Erika Drees died at the age of 73 in a Stendal hospice . The funeral service took place on January 20, 2009 with several hundred mourners, including well-known Saxon-Anhalt politicians from several parties, in the Stendal St. Petri Church . The subsequent burial also took place in Stendal.

literature

Web links

Commons : Erika Drees  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Friederike Juliane Cornelssen, Christoph Friedrich von Lowtzow (ed.): The Carl-Hunnius boarding school in Wyk auf Foehr. Example of boarding school education in the post-war period. Self-published, Pinneberg 2001. p. 303
personal data
SURNAME Drees, Erika
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German civil rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 2009
Place of death Stendal