Frank Richter (civil rights activist)

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Frank Richter (in the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig on October 9, 2014, the 25th anniversary of the revolution)

Frank Richter (born April 23, 1966 in Leipzig ) is a German trade unionist and civil rights activist . In the 1980s he was part of the civil rights movement and organized resistance in the GDR , was elected spokesman for the human rights working group and, in 1989, was a full-time employee in the coordination group of the justice working group and the human rights working group, two groups which, by initiating mass protest, were essential to overcoming the SED - Domination contributed.

Life

Frank Richter was born in 1966 as the son of a railroad woman and a steel construction fitter, attended the polytechnic high school in Leipzig until 1982 and completed his training as a machine and system fitter in 1984. He then worked as a steel construction fitter at VEB SM Kirow in Leipzig until July 1989 .

Engaged in the young community since the early 1980s , Frank Richter became a delegate to the Leipzig Youth Convention and the State Youth Convention of the Evangelical Lutheran State Church of Saxony .

In 1985, Frank Richter made the decision to refuse military service with a weapon. On the occasion of the draft and the drafting check, he declared in March that he would only be ready for military service as a construction soldier . As a result, he was checked by the Ministry for State Security in March 1985 , because the MfS already saw the legally permitted change to construction soldier service as a form of conscientious objection. In the summer of 1989, on the occasion of a further draft check, he declared a total refusal to do military service.

Political engagement up to the 1989 revolution in the GDR

Organized resistance against the GDR state

In May 1987, Frank Richter found the human rights working group in Christoph Wonneberger's Lukas Church in Leipzig and worked from then on. From April 1989 Frank Richter was one of the elected speakers of the group together with Johannes Fischer and Steffen Kühhirt. He regularly participated in the design of prayers for peace in the Nikolaikirche, including the peace prayer of September 25, 1989, which was followed by the first large Monday demonstration on the Leipziger Ring with around 8,000 participants.

Frank Richter experienced multiple "additions", ie provisional arrests, and instructions from the MfS. A provisional arrest took place in January 1988 for "high-publicity graffiti": "Freedom for Krawczyk!" This marked the affixing of a letter to the showcase of the Kirow factory with which Frank Richter not only opposed the imprisonment of Stephan Krawczyk , but all prisoners in Berlin protested.

The human rights working group represented Frank Richter together with Oliver Kloß , Uwe Szynkowski, Steffen Kühhirt and Christoph Motzer in the GDR-wide working and coordination group on the military service problem of peace, moderated by Heiko Lietz and organized in the Samariterkirche in Berlin. Since mid-1988 Frank Richter has worked in the coordination group of the Human Rights Working Group and the Leipzig Working Group on Justice , in the Saturday Circle and from December 10, 1988 in the resulting working group on the situation of human rights in the GDR.

Frank Richter was co-author and editor of various samizdat magazines, including a. The mosquito. - What was going on in Leipzig , confession (of the GDR-wide working and coordination group on the military service problem ), Varia - working texts for the GDR-wide day of action for those imprisoned for political and religious reasons in the ČSSR and Forum for Church & Human Rights .

On May 7, 1989, the day of the fraudulent local elections in the GDR in 1989 , Frank Richter was temporarily arrested "to prevent provocative acts during election day". In July 1989 he was one of the co-organizers of the “statt-kirchentag” in Leipzig in the Lukaskirche of Pastor Christoph Wonneberger .

In August 1988, the Ministry for State Security started the OV "Julius" operational case against Frank Richter , in which it was initially processed together with Sebastian Fleischhack, Kathrin Walther and Christoph Motzer. Lieutenant Colonel Wallner, head of Department XX of the Leipzig-Stadt district office of the MfS, wrote in his statement: “The establishment of the OV is justified. The suspects are z. Some of them are still very young, but already very active and hardened, negatively hostile GDR citizens who have a clearly delimited sphere of activity in the sense of underground political activity and through an exponent of the PUT, which is also processed in an OV of the KD Leipzig-Stadt, be instructed. ”With the exponent of the PUT, the“ political underground activity ”, Christoph Wonneberger was meant. From December 1988 onwards, only Christoph Motzer and Frank Richter were edited in the OV "Julius".

Engagement during the 1989 revolution

From August 1989 to February 1990 Frank Richter was one of the "full-time" employees of the coordination group of the Justice Working Group and the Human Rights Working Group together with Kathrin Walther , Thomas Rudolph and Rainer Müller . Their livelihood (below the amount of a scholarship paid in the GDR) was financed from donations and the sale of samizdat magazines. Since there had been individual closings of state-owned companies in the Berlin area since 1987 and consequently involuntary unemployment in the GDR state, the state could no longer rigorously prosecute the "breach of duty to work " (punishable under Section 249 of the GDR's StGB ). This circumstance was immediately used by subversive groups in Leipzig to hire full-time employees. There was of course no legal security for these employees, because the law was not changed, only its application was suspended.

After the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig in September and in October also in Dresden and other GDR cities brutal attacks on arrested demonstrators, Christoph Wonneberger , Kathrin Walther and Thomas Rudolph drafted the proposal to appeal against violence : “React to peacefulness not by force! We are one people! ".

The first version had already been discussed and approved at the meeting of the Human Rights Working Group. On Saturday, Frank Richter was also involved in the resolution of the text, which three Leipzig subversive groups adopted. On the weekend before October 9, 1989, Frank Richter printed the appeal with others in an edition of at least 25,000 copies until the paper supplies were used up. It says, among other things:

We are one people ! [...] The party and government in particular must be made responsible for the serious situation that has arisen . "

On Monday, the leaflet was distributed not only before the peace prayer around Leipzig's Nikolaikirche , but throughout the city center. The text was read out in several Leipzig churches. The decisive Monday demonstration with well over 70,000 participants was peaceful for the first time. In the evening, the near end of the GDR was toasted in the Lukas community.

On November 9, 1989, the Human Rights Working Group ceased its work. By September 1989 at the latest, the majority of employees from the civil and human rights groups, the Human Rights Working Group and the Leipzig Justice Working Group, had joined the Peace and Human Rights Leipzig initiative and founded a regional group, one of which was Frank Richter.

This organization already appeared exemplary to the two subversive groups: "The initiative has taken to overthrow the SED, even if it did not say so at the beginning."

From March 1990 to September 1990 Frank Richter was a political employee of the Peace and Human Rights Initiative, Leipzig Regional Group. The focus of his work was the collection of human rights violations, the support of the formation of free trade unions and the first freely elected employee representatives as well as establishing contact with trade unions in the Federal Republic and the German Trade Union Confederation.

Work since the unification of Germany

In October 1990 Frank Richter was able to begin studying at the Academy of Work at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main , and by December 1991 he completed this training as a trade union secretary with legal protection tasks. Since then, he has been the legal protection secretary (association lawyer) at the German Trade Union Federation and DGB Rechtsschutz GmbH.

Frank Richter has been involved in the archive of the Initiative Peace and Human Rights Saxony eV (IFM archive) since 1998.

literature

  • Frank Richter: We are so free. The “Human Rights Working Group” , in: Andreas Peter Pausch: Resistance - Pastor Christoph Wonneberger , Berlin, Metropol, 2014, ISBN 978-3-86331-184-1 , pp. 189–195.
  • Thomas Rudolph , Oliver Kloss , Rainer Müller , Christoph Wonneberger (ed. On behalf of the IFM archive): Way in the uprising. Chronicle on opposition and resistance in the GDR from August 1987 to December 1989. Vol. 1, Leipzig, Araki Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-941848-17-7 ( preface as a reading sample for download) especially Part III, p . 321 ff.
  • Thomas Mayer: Who doesn't give up. Christoph Wonneberger - a biography . Leipzig, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2014, ISBN 978-3-374-03733-9 .
  • The Saxon State Commissioner for the Documents of the State Security Service of the former GDR (ed.): Aufbruch 89. The peaceful revolution in Saxony (revised new edition of the exhibition catalog 10 years of peaceful revolution - a way of remembrance ). Dresden, 2004.
  • 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.
  • Uwe Koch / Stephan Eschler (Eds.): Clench your teeth up high. Documents on conscientious objection in the GDR 1962-1990, Kückenshagen, Scheunen-Verlag, 1994, ISBN 3-929370-14-X .

Web links

Commons : Frank Richter  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. See IFM-Archiv eV: Leipziger Menschenrechtegruppen 1989. Ten years ago today , page 7: September 25, 1989 - The question of power is raised. Leipzig, 1st edition 1999.
  2. Human Rights Working Group & Justice Working Group Leipzig (ed.): Die Mücke. Documentation of the events in Leipzig . Leipzig, GDR Samizdat , March 1989, pp. 1–17 (excerpt).
  3. Leipzig Justice Working Group / Human Rights Working Group / Environmental Protection Working Group : Appeal of Organized Resistance to Nonviolence on October 9, 1989 , digital copies of the IFM archive, accessed on October 9, 2009.
  4. Thomas Rudolph in an interview 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, p. 195.