Heinz-Josef Durstewitz

Heinz-Josef Durstewitz (born March 26, 1945 in Birkenfelde , Thuringia ) is a German Roman Catholic priest and was a representative of the Catholic opposition movement in the GDR .

Life

Durstewitz was ordained a priest in 1970 and was then chaplain in Niederorschel , Eisenach and Apolda . As pastor of the Catholic student community in Jena (1975 to 1982) he was monitored by the MfS ( Operative Personal Control "Wanderer"). From 1982 to 1990 he was secretary of the pastoral conference at the Berlin Bishops' Conference and editor of the "Theological Bulletin" , in which articles by West German authors were published for use within the church. In addition, he worked as an author for samizdat newspapers of the opposition scene and belonged to the initiative group “Rejection of Practice and Principle of Demarcation”, which later became the citizens' movement Democracy Now . In 1989 he was the only Catholic official in the GDR who signed an appeal against the fraudulent elections in the May elections. He was temporarily active for the DA in Berlin.

From 1991 to 1995 Durstewitz was senior pastor in the Federal Border Guard , in 1995 he became provost in Heilbad Heiligenstadt , episcopal clergyman commissioner and non-resident cathedral capital of the diocese of Erfurt .

On January 10, 2006, the Minister-President of the Free State of Thuringia , Dieter Althaus , presented Durstewitz with the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon . On December 4, 2011, Provost Durstewitz retired.

literature

• Short biography for:  Durstewitz, Heinz-Josef . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Gunnar Lammert-Türk: Underground magazines from the church cellar (Deutschlandfunk Kultur, September 15, 2019)

Web links

• Literature by and about Heinz-Josef Durstewitz in the catalog of the German National Library