Memorial library in honor of the victims of communism

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Memorial library in honor of the victims of communism
Nikolaikirchplatz Berlin-Mitte 119-170.JPG

Memorial library, Nikolaikirchplatz 5

founding 1990
Library type Special library
place Berlin
ISIL DE-2157 (Berlin GedenkB Sacrificed Communism)

The memorial library in honor of the victims of communism is a special library that was founded in 1990 by the association of the same name. It is based in Berlin's Nikolaiviertel . The memorial library contains non-fiction and fiction to educate people about the causes and consequences of Soviet communism . The carrier is a non-profit association.

history

The cultural institution was founded in 1990 under the name Memorial Library in honor of the victims of Stalinism and was initially housed on Hausvogteiplatz. It was based on the idea of ​​keeping books that were banned in the GDR . The initiator and first head of the library is still Ursula Popiolek .

Well-known opposition and civil rights activists such as Katja Havemann , Bärbel Bohley and Jürgen Fuchs belonged to the circle of sponsors and supporters . The organizations of the citizens' movement, especially the New Forum , supported the establishment as well as the Heinrich Böll Foundation and numerous individuals. Board members included the author Siegmar Faust and the civil rights activist and publicist Wolfgang Templin .

After the scandal in 1995 about the unjustly paid compensation payments to the former concentration camp guard Margot Pietzner , in which Ursula Popiolek and Siegmar Faust were involved, Bärbel Bohley, Jürgen Fuchs and Wolfgang Templin left the association. There was also an arson attack on a private vehicle owned by the Popiolek family.

The second seat of the memorial library was the shop in Rosenthaler Strasse near the Hackesche Höfe in a house that had not been renovated at the time. At that time there was a cooperation with the Märtyrerkirche relief campaign . She maintained a permanent exhibition in the library and contributed to the rental costs.

On January 22, 1999, a water attack was carried out on the memorial library, which caused “considerable damage to the collections of books, documents and furniture”. In the same year the library moved from Rosenthaler Strasse to Nikolaikirchplatz. The Berlin State Commissioner for the Documents of the State Security Service of the former GDR as well as the "Foundation to Process the SED Dictatorship" support the library.

structure

The memorial library is organized as an association

  • 1st chair: Ursula Popiolek
  • 2nd chair: Ulrike Rose
  • Assessor: Friedhelm Reis
  • Treasurer: Stephan Drechsel
  • Library director: Thomas Dahnert (since 2005)

collection

The collection of the memorial library comprises over 13,000 works in the following areas:

  • Research on socialism
  • GDR history
    • Justice and State Security
    • Opposition and resistance
  • History of the Soviet Union
  • Crimes of Stalinism
  • Imprisonment and camp reminders (including manuscripts)
  • Literature by former oppositional GDR writers and dissidents of the Eastern Bloc

The majority of the book collection comes from donations.

Events and speakers

The memorial library has been organizing exhibitions, readings and lectures since December 14, 1990, and a total of 680 by the end of 2018.

Well-known speakers included contemporary witnesses Günter Schabowski and Charlotte von Mahlsdorf . Political and historical contributions include a. by Helmut Müller-Enbergs , Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk , Klaus Schroeder or Marianne Birthler . Events with writers like Uwe Kolbe , filmmakers (e.g. Heribert Schwan , Heiner Sylvester ) and journalists like Hans-Dieter Schütt are also part of the program.

Representatives of conservative currents and the New Right were repeatedly the godfathers of a significant proportion of events : the political scientist Konrad Löw (6 ×), the writers Chaim Noll (2 ×), Siegmar Faust (17 ×) and Ulrich Schacht (15 ×), the publicists Vera Lengsfeld (3 ×), Dmitrij Chmelnizki (3 ×) and Jochen Stern (17 ×), the filmmaker Peter Grimm (4 ×), the historian Bogdan Musiał (4 ×), the journalists Bettina Röhl (3 ×) and Gerhard Löwenthal (3 ×). The conservative politicians Jörg Schönbohm (2002) and Erika Steinbach (2012), the historian Michael Wolffsohn (2010) and the journalist Nicolaus Fest (2018) were also podium guests.

criticism

The sponsoring association was also in the public eye in the mid-1990s, as representatives of the sect-like association for psychological knowledge of human nature (VPM) and the Mun sect were involved in the library.

In addition, the book collection was criticized because in 1995 right-wing extremist publications were discovered in the library that had been offered for loan.

In 2010, the range of events was once again very specifically criticized: the historian Dmitrij Khmelnitsky gave an alternative view of the question of guilt in World War II. Similar criticism was directed in 2002/2003 to Konrad Löw, who in his book The Guilt asked the question of guilt about the Holocaust in the direction of the churches in Germany. Löw gave a lecture on this in 2003 in the memorial library.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Yumpu.com: Ursula Popiolek, address on the occasion of the… - Memorial Library . In: yumpu.com . ( yumpu.com [accessed November 27, 2018]).
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Templin: Memorial library in honor of the victims of Stalinism - the current conflict. In: Listen and Look . 1995, H. 16, pp. 85-90.
  3. ^ Unclean money , by Toralf Staud , Die Zeit , August 2, 1996
  4. ↑ Andreas Schreier: ALL SACRIFICE; OR WHAT ? In: The daily newspaper: taz . December 1, 1994, ISSN  0931-9085 , p. 11 ( taz.de [accessed on November 27, 2018]).
  5. ^ Jürgen Fuchs Havemann Society
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Templin Memorial Library in Honor of the Victims of Stalinism - The Current Conflict (PDF) Horch und Guck No. 16 pp. 85–90
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Templin ddr89.de
  8. ↑ Throwing in the towel New Germany August 29, 1995
  9. ↑ Ursula Popiolek Hort of Remembrance , by Detlef Kühn, " Junge Freiheit " 33/02 August 9, 2002
  10. ↑ Lutz Schnedelbach: attack on Memorial Library in Mitte. In: Berliner Zeitung. January 25, 1999.
  11. ↑ a b Detlef Kühn: Ursula Popiolek - Hort of Remembrance . In: YOUNG FREEDOM . ( jungefreiheit.de [accessed on November 27, 2018]).
  12. ↑ Barbara Bollwahn: Incendiary devices against memorial employees . In: The daily newspaper: taz . February 20, 1995, ISSN  0931-9085 , p. 21 ( taz.de [accessed November 27, 2018]).
  13. ↑ The Association (as of May 13, 2014)
  14. ↑ website of the Memorial Library , query Date: September 12, 2012 found.
  15. ^ Memorial library for the victims of Stalinism: The sting in the flesh of the SED left . In: peculiarly free . ( ef-magazin.de [accessed November 27, 2018]).
  16. ↑ Event archive
  17. ↑ Event archive, query date: December 18, 2012.
  18. ↑ Renate Oschlies: Supporting a concentration camp guard brought the society into twilight / Faust defends the collaboration of sect activists: Renger sees her name being misused by the memorial library . In: Berliner Zeitung . ( berliner-zeitung.de [accessed on November 27, 2018]).
  19. ↑ Renate Oschlies: Supporting a concentration camp guard brought the society into twilight / Faust defends the collaboration of sect activists: Renger sees her name being misused by the memorial library . In: Berliner Zeitung . ( berliner-zeitung.de [accessed on November 27, 2018]).
  20. ↑ CDU cuddles with the far right - malfunction reporter . In: Malfunction reporter . February 6, 2010 ( zeit.de [accessed November 27, 2018]).
  21. ↑ Konrad Löw: The guilt: Christians and Jews in the National Socialist and today's judgment . Resch Verlag, Graefelfing 2002, ISBN 978-3-935197-21-2 ( hsozkult.de [accessed December 6, 2018]).
  22. ↑ “Are the churches complicit in the Holocaust?” (PDF) Retrieved on December 6, 2018 (lecture by Prof. Dr. Konrad Löw in the memorial library in honor of the victims of Stalinism on March 6, 2003).

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 59.6 ″  N , 13 ° 24 ′ 28.3 ″  E