Günter Särchen

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Günter Särchen (born December 14, 1927 in Wittichenau ; † July 19, 2004 in Hoyerswerda ) was a Catholic social pedagogue, publicist and pioneer of German-Polish reconciliation. He headed the office for pastoral aids in Magdeburg .

Günter Särchen during an interview in 1998 for a research project on Catholic film work in the GDR under the supervision of Josef Müller, Institute for Practical Theology at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg im Breisgau, then Linus Hauser from the Institute for Catholic Theology at the Justus -Liebig-Universität Giessen and Hussite Faculty of Theology at Charles University Praha.

Life

Günter Särchen was born in 1927 in the small town of Wittichenau in the Sorbian Upper Lusatia . There he attended elementary school, then until 1942 the Lessing high school in Hoyerswerda , then from 1942 to 1944 the business school in Senftenberg . In 1944 he began an apprenticeship as a textile salesman. In January 1945 he was drafted and taken prisoner of war in Winzenheim near Bad Kreuznach .

He returned home as an invalid , suffering from severe tuberculosis . A long stay in a sanatorium followed. For Särchen, who went to war without enthusiasm, but knew he was complicit, the months in the camp and in the sanctuary became a time of reflection and conversion. During his captivity, he dealt with freedom, human rights and democracy for the first time.

After his discharge from the sanatorium, he began studying social education in West Berlin . During this time he became familiar with the Catholic social doctrine , which was to determine his future thoughts and actions. Günter Särchen was a diocesan youth worker in Görlitz from May 1950 to 1953 , then in Magdeburg until March 1957 .

From April 1957 he was an editor at St. Benno-Verlag in Leipzig , the only Catholic publisher in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). At the same time he began to set up a Catholic picture center for all jurisdictions of the GDR. In January 1958 he became department head in the episcopal office in Magdeburg and headed the office for pastoral aids , which supplied all Catholic parishes in the GDR with media. He headed this job until 1984. In June 1984 he was disabled.

His attitude, which was in contradiction to the Marxist-Leninist ideology , made him suspicious in the eyes of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED); he was monitored for decades by unofficial employees (IM) of the State Security Service of the GDR and "hostile negative operationally processed" .

In 1990 Günter Särchen was honored with the commander's level of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland , and in 1993 with the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon . In 1998 he and Jerzy Turowicz , long-time editor-in-chief of Tygodnik Powszechny , received the German-Polish Prize , and in 2003 the Lothar Kreyssig Peace Prize . He was an honorary citizen of his hometown Wittichenau.

Services

In the mid-1950s, Günter Särchen met the Leipzig oratorians Josef Gülden , Wolfgang Trilling and Theodor von Vittinghoff-Schell , who, inspired by Carl Oskar von Soden , had been thinking about a European commonality with young Poles even before the Second World War . He was able to build on these contacts when he went to Poland for the first time in 1960. He found interlocutors in parishes and monasteries, in the clubs of the Catholic intelligentsia , in Laski , the spiritual center of the Polish lay movement . Also Karol Wojtyla , the future Pope John Paul II., Then Bishop of Krakow , supported the efforts Särchens.

Günter Särchen attached great importance to practical help. He brought to Poland what the communities there needed and what could be procured in the GDR.

When he met Lothar Kreyssig , who, after the Wall was built in 1961 in Magdeburg, set up the Action atonement in the GDR, he immediately supported him. Thanks to his numerous and close contacts, the first pilgrimage to Poland was prepared in the summer of 1964 . But the SED forbade them to leave the country. Only a year later, volunteers were able to travel to Auschwitz and Majdanek and work in the former extermination camps.

Günter Särchen was a member of the management of Aktion Sühnezeichen in the GDR from 1963 to 1975. For many his ecumenical zeal went too far. The Magdeburg auxiliary bishop Friedrich Maria Rintelen supported him without reservation. He was able to organize pilgrimages to Poland every year and set up a Polish seminar from which the Anna Morawska Society later emerged. In 1990 he was one of the initiators of the Kreisau Foundation for European Understanding .

He has also edited numerous publications. Since the publication possibilities for the church in the GDR were very limited and subject to state censorship , almost all of these writings were reproduced by hand. Because writings that were intended “for internal use within the church” were not subject to state censorship. Günter Särchen has also been active as an author many times.

In September 1991, the then Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki gave a widely acclaimed speech in Berlin in which he spoke about the future shape of Europe and the opportunities for a new neighborhood between Germans and Poles. He expressly paid tribute to two men from the GDR as pioneers: Günter Särchen and Lothar Kreyssig, the founders of Aktion Sühnezeichen. He called Särchen a person of extraordinary righteousness and willingness to make sacrifices, with whom he was a close friend.

Works

  • GS [d. i. Günter Särchen] (Ed.): Life from the reconciliation. [hectographed handout for parish work, note: only for internal church use , print note: 13/6050/1011/75 ], Magdeburg o. J. [1975]
  • Günter Särchen and Josef Gülden (eds.): Laski. Home of the blind. [Handout, note: only for internal church use ], [Magdeburg] 1975, [hectographed]
  • Günter Särchen and Ludwig Mehlhorn : Jan Strzelecki: Testing in the certificate. [Radix Verlag], undated [Berlin] undated [1989] [ radix-Blätter booklet 11. - Samizdat print]
  • Günter Särchen: I am happy that I was there. Reflections on June 17, 1953. In: Bernd Börger, Michael Kröselberg (Hrsg.): The power grew in secret. Catholic youth between the Elbe and the Oder 1945 - 1990. Verlag Haus Altenberg, Düsseldorf 1993, pp. 289-294, ISBN 3-7761-0020-6
  • Günter Särchen (Ed.): Shalom the difficult dialogue among estranged siblings. Poles and Jews - Jews and Poles; History, culture, documents, reflection, literature. Anna Morawska seminar of Aktion Sühnezeichen, Magdeburg 1990, [hectographed]
  • Günter Särchen: Krabat and Colonel Joannes Schadowitz. On the 300th anniversary of the death of Joannes Schadowitz, popularly known as "Krabat" by the Wittichenau and Groß Särchen people. May 29, 1704 - May 29, 2004. Wittichenau City Library, Wittichenau 2003 [printed as a manuscript]
  • Günter Särchen: The gray one. "Donkey" in the service of the Eternal. - An autobiographical essay. Manuscript, undated [after 1990]
  • Günter Särchen: Bell cap. The fool and his master. Written down over many years from the notebook of a court jester. Manuscript, undated [after 1990]

literature

  • Michael Ludwig: Quieter than Adenauer and de Gaulle, but at least as brave. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 212 of September 12, 1998, p. 6.
  • Konrad Weiß : pioneer of a new future. In: Publik-Forum , No. 24 of December 19, 2003, pp. 10-11.
  • Konrad Weiß : Bear guilt and live reconciliation. On the death of Günter Särchen. In: Sächsische Zeitung, July 23, 2004, p. 12.
  • Tadeusz Mazowiecki: Przyjaciel. [A friend]. Günter Särchen (1927-2004). In: Tygodnik Powszechny, Kraków, No. 32 (2874) of August 8, 2004, p. 9.
  • Wojciech Pięciak: Well grobie moim "Patron" napiszcie. [Writes 'Patron' on my tombstone] In: Tygodnik Powszechny, Kraków, No. 32 (2874) of August 8, 2004, pp. 8–9.
  • Krzysztof Ruchniewicz: Günter Särchen (1927-2004) - Our Golgotha ​​is in the east. In: "My Poland ..." Portraits of German friends of Poland . Leipzig: Thelem Verlag 2005, pp. 259-290. ISBN 3-937672-36-2 .
  • Rudolf Urban: The Patron - Günter Särchen's Life and Work for the German-Polish Reconciliation Dissertation. Dresden: Neisse Verlag 2007. ISBN 978-3-940310-03-3 .
  • Theo Mechtenberg: Reconciliation against resistance. Günter Särchen's commitment to Poland. In: Germany Archive, Vol. 41 (2008), No. 2, pp. 233–241.
  • Anna Wolff-Powęska: Niemieckie kłopoty z niepamięcią In: Gazeta Wyborcza, 22./23. August 2009, pp. 18-20 (Polish).
  • Bernd Schäfer:  Särchen, Günter . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Särchen, Günter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Catholic social pedagogue, publicist, pioneer of German-Polish reconciliation
DATE OF BIRTH December 14, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Wittichenau
DATE OF DEATH July 19, 2004
Place of death Hoyerswerda