Hansjörg Weigel

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Hansjörg "Hande" Weigel (born March 15, 1943 in Chemnitz , † April 29, 2020 in Jena ) was a German civil rights activist and pacifist .

Life

Weigel was born in Chemnitz in 1943, where his father worked as a prison officer. From 1949 to 1957 he attended elementary school in Königswalde , then until 1959 the middle school in Werdau , from which he graduated with a secondary school leaving certificate. From 1959 to 1961 he completed an apprenticeship as a vehicle electrician and was involved in the training company as an FDJ group secretary. From 1961 to 1990 Weigel worked in a PGH in Werdau.

Because of his Protestant denomination , Weigel refused to serve in the National People's Army in 1963 . Ultimately, he was deployed as a construction soldier on duty without a weapon in 1966/1967 . Weigel volunteered to promote Christian peace education in his parish . In 1973 he was the main initiator of the establishment of the Königswalde Peace Seminar , in which seminars on political topics were held twice a year, initially in the rectory and later in the village church of Königswalde until the end of the GDR. As a result, Weigel came under intensive observation and processing by the Ministry for State Security ( operational process "Spaten II"). For alleged anti-state propaganda , he was long in 1980 three months detention set and eventually sentenced to 18 months in prison. After protests by the church leadership and the Western media, the sentence was suspended after two and a half months and he was offered to move to the Federal Republic of Germany, which he waived. He stayed in Königswalde and continued to be involved in the parish and peace seminar. From 1984 to 1996 Weigel was a member of the regional synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony . After the reunification of Germany , Weigel belonged to the Werdau city council from 1990 - initially without a party for a “ citizens' council ”, from 1999 for the SPD .

He died at the end of April 2020 at the Jena University Hospital as a result of a SARS-CoV-2 infection during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany .

Weigel was married and had two children, including the politician Andreas Weigel (* 1964), a member of the German Bundestag from 2002 to 2009 .

Honors

  • Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class (1999)
  • Medal of Honor of the City of Werdau

Fonts

  • "You only change what you accept". In: Eckhard Jesse (Ed.): Peaceful Revolution and German Unity. Saxon civil rights activists take stock. Ch. Links, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-86153-379-0 , pp. 156-167.
  • The uncertain beginning. The Königswalder Peace Seminar. In: Research Journal Social Movements . Analysis of Democracy and Civil Society. 26 (2013), Issue 4, ISSN  2192-4848 , pp. 74-78 ( forschungsjournal.de [PDF; 1.4 MB]).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Co-founder of the Christian Peace Seminar Königswalde dies: Hansjörg "Hande" Weigel died on April 29, 2020. In: Der Sonntag . 4th May 2020.
  2. ↑ a b Eckhard Jesse:  Weigel, Hansjörg . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  3. ↑ Ronny Schilder: Ex-Bundestag member Andreas Weigel survived Corona: "Today I feel freer". In: Free Press . Complete edition. June 30, 2020, p. 3 (beginning of article freely available).
  4. ↑ (ael): Hansjörg Weigel passed away. In: Free Press . Zwickauer Zeitung. May 4, 2020, p. 12.
  5. ↑ Federal Gazette . October 6, 1999.
  6. ↑ Eckhard Jesse: The founder of the Königswalder peace seminar Hansjörg Weigel. In: Landtag Courier Saxony. Edition 5/2015, ZDB ID 1093382-7 , pp. 20-21.
personal data
SURNAME Weigel, Hansjörg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weigel, hands
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German civil rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Chemnitz
DATE OF DEATH April 29, 2020
Place of death Jena