Gusti Steiner
Gusti Steiner (* 1938 ; † June 12, 2004 in Dortmund ) was a German social worker who was in a wheelchair because of muscle wasting. Steiner was one of the founders of the Federal German emancipatory movement for the disabled .
Steiner attended regular schools from 1946 to 1956 because there was no special education system at that time.
In 1973, together with the publicist Ernst Klee , he started an adult education course in Frankfurt am Main, in which people with disabilities were supposed to learn to improve their own situation. Gusti Steiner's role model was the American civil rights movement, which fought against discrimination and for equality. In analogy to their self-confident slogan Black is beautiful, Gusti Steiner provoked the professional helper scene and the large charities with the slogan “Being disabled is beautiful”, which he also made the title of a book. For him, disability was something political, not an object of charitable welfare. With this, Steiner initiated a paradigm shift in disability policy , who initially met with a small but growing group of people with disabilities . An important instrument for this was the publication of the “handicapped calendar”, the cover of which always adorned the image of what Steiner definitely did not want to be: “Our little model cripple - grateful, dear, a bit stupid and easy to manage.”
One of the greatest successes of this new disabled movement was in 1981 the disruptive actions against the official opening of the UN Year of the Disabled in Dortmund's Westfalenhalle . Together with other handicapped people, including Theresia Degener and Franz Christoph , Steiner chained himself on the main stage and thus prevented the then Federal President Karl Carstens from giving the opening speech. Steiner was also one of the initiators of the cripple tribunal against human rights violations in the welfare state, which took place in Dortmund in December 1981. Steiner dealt in detail with the causes of the exclusion of the disabled and demanded in this context that disabled people should determine their care and assistance needs themselves. Steiner criticized the large facilities for the disabled and favored independent living concepts , again based on the US model .
Steiner, who worked in an early intervention facility of the Diakonisches Werk, was also particularly committed to barrier-free passenger transport. Especially the Deutsche Bahn AG came into his sights again and again because they did not design the stations barrier-free and also did not allow their trains to be built for wheelchair users. Gusti Steiner also always drew the bow from the segregation and discrimination of the disabled to the development of social state regulatory instruments vis-à-vis other groups.
See also
Works
- 1982 handicapped calendar : rights, tips, news, (together with Ernst Klee ) ISBN 978-3596233137
- Legal Lexicon for the Disabled , Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag 1990, ISBN 978-3596233427
- Manual and footbook for the disabled , Fischer-Taschenbuchverlag Ffm 1992, ISBN 978-3596233977
- Schwarzbuch Deutsche Bahn AG , AG SPAK Verlag, Munich 2003, 155 pages, ISBN 3-930-83036-1
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Steiner, Gusti |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German social worker, founder of the Federal German emancipatory disability movement |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1938 |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 12, 2004 |
| Place of death | Dortmund |