Horst Gienke

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Horst Gienke

Horst Gienke (born April 18, 1930 in Schwerin ) was Bishop of the Evangelical Church in Greifswald from 1972 to 1989 and Chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church of the Union (EKU) in the GDR from 1973 to 1976 and 1987 to 1989 . After his resignation in 1989 following a vote of no confidence by the regional synod, it became known that Gienke was registered as an unofficial employee of the GDR State Security .

Life

Horst Gienke was born the son of a civil servant. After graduating from the Goethe High School in Schwerin , he studied Protestant theology in Rostock from 1948 to 1953 . Then he was parish priest in Blankenhagen near Ribnitz and in Rostock. From 1964 to 1972 Gienke was head of the seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg in Schwerin. In 1970 he was proposed for the office of bishop of the Mecklenburg regional church, but the synod elected Heinrich Rathke to the office of bishop. On January 1, 1972, he was appointed state superintendent of Schwerin. In March 1972 Gienke was elected as the successor to Friedrich-Wilhelm Krummacher as bishop of the then " Evangelical Church of Greifswald " (until 1968 and from 1990: Pomeranian Evangelical Church ). On the part of the SED, the then State Secretary for Church Affairs in the GDR , Hans Seigewasser , took part in Gienke's inauguration . From 1973 to 1976 and 1987 to 1989 he was chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church of the Union (EKU) in the GDR. In 1980 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Theology Section of the Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald . In November 1989, Gienke, whose authoritarian understanding of his office and his close to SED conduct of office had been increasingly criticized, was called upon by the regional synod to resign and, with his approval, was subsequently given temporary retirement. In April 2010 the Pomeranian Evangelical Church paid tribute to Gienke on the occasion of his 80th birthday with a reception in the "House of Silence" in Weitenhagen near Greifswald.

Gienke is married and has two children.

Resignation as bishop

On June 11, 1989, the St. Nikolai Cathedral was inaugurated in Greifswald in a ceremony in the presence of Erich Honecker after extensive renovation. The project was controversial in church circles because there was a lack of money for many other church buildings. In particular, Honecker's invitation, made by Gienke without consulting the synod and church leadership, met with rejection. The festive church service, which was one of the last major public appearances by Honecker before his fall on October 18, 1989, was therefore accompanied by various protests.

When an exchange of letters between Gienke and Honecker was published in the SED organ Neues Deutschland on July 19, 1989 , in which the church papers were attacked for their critical reporting on the inauguration of the cathedral, Gienke came under increasing pressure. In September 1989 the Greifswald parish convention finally asked the members of the church leadership in writing to express their distrust of the bishop. At the same time, Gienke was asked to resign. However, after heated controversy, the church leadership sided with Gienke on September 21, 1989.

The regional synod did not follow this position at its subsequent autumn meeting, but instead expressed mistrust to Gienke on November 5, 1989 with 32 to 30 votes, as "a profound, increasing loss of confidence in the administration of the bishop had occurred for a long time". After a period of reflection, Gienke drew the necessary conclusions and resigned from his position. The church leadership then put Gienke into retirement.

Employee of the Ministry of State Security

After Gienke's resignation it became known that he had been run by the Ministry for State Security (MfS) since 1972 as IM ( unofficial employee ) "Orion". These reports were subsequently confirmed by scientific research. The Rostock district administration of the Ministry for State Security had registered Gienke as an IM under the number I / 1066/72. According to his own statement, Gienke had a total of 37 confidential conversations with MfS officers up to 1989, in which they dealt with “fundamental questions about political decisions and the internal and economic structure of the state”. These discussions clearly violated the general consensus in the regional churches of the GDR that regardless of the specific content of the church, no contact with the MfS should be maintained.

After his identity as an unofficial employee of the MfS was revealed, Gienke denied that he had deliberately made himself available as an IM and in his autobiography, published in 1996, portrayed himself as the victim of a defamation campaign by a West German “journalle” that ruined his reputation as a bishop wanted to "damage the image of the church". At the same time, he combined his justification in his autobiography with a fundamental criticism of the freedom of the press : "What is a society worth whose freedom can be misused with impunity to tarnish or even destroy the reputation of others?" The exact extent of the cooperation between Gienke and the state security cannot be clarified, since the file, which consists of six volumes, is not in the holdings of the BStU . According to the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi files, the files were destroyed on December 4, 1989 in the course of the fall of the Berlin Wall .

Artur Amthor, Gienke's Stasi interlocutor at the time, explained that Gienke had conversations with the Stasi, but did not work as an IM. From December 1989 to March 1990, ie during the period in which the files of the IM "Orion" were destroyed, Amthor was the district manager of the Stasi successor authority, Office for National Security, responsible for the destruction of the Stasi files in the Rostock district.

Publications

literature

  • Rahel von Saß: The "Greifswalder Weg". The GDR church policy and the Protestant regional church in Greifswald from 1980 to 1989. Published by the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania State Commissioner for the records of the State Security Service of the former GDR, Schwerin 1998, ISBN 3-933255-08-2 .
  • Irmfried Garbe, Wolfgang Nixdorf (ed.): Cathedral of St. Nikolai Greifswald. Parish church between politics and polemics. Studies on the Greifswald regional church and the rededication of the cathedral in 1989. Published on behalf of the regional synod of the Pomeranian Evangelical Church, Schwerin 2005, ISBN 3-935749-43-0 .
  • Uwe Funk:  Gienke, Horst . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Commons : Horst Gienke  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Horst Gienke , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 24/1997 of June 2, 1997, in the Munzinger Archive , accessed on August 4, 2009 ( beginning of the article freely accessible)
  2. ↑ According to the theologian Friedrich Wilhelm Graf , Gienke already represented an "authoritarian, Catholic understanding of office" when he took office as bishop. Friedrich Wilhelm Graf: Justification of the pardoned sinner . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . January 9, 1997, No. 7, p. 6.
  3. ↑ Pomeranian old bishop Horst Gienke is 75 years old.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) April 14, 2005 at: kirche-mv.de@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.kirche-mv.de
  4. ^ Reception on the 80th birthday of former Bishop Horst Gienke. ( Memento from May 15, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) April 26, 2010 on: kirche-mv.de
  5. ↑ Frank Pergande: An obituary and its consequences. In the Pomeranian church there is an argument about the GDR past - once again . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 14, 2015, p. 12.
  6. ↑ Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk : Endgame. The 1989 revolution in the GDR. Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-58357-5 , p. 342, (online) .
  7. ^ Regional Church Archives Greifswald , press office of the Evangelical Regional Church Greifswald (ed.): Greifswalder Informationsdienst . No. 4 (1989), p. 1.
  8. ↑ One in no man's land . In: Der Spiegel . No. 8 , 1992, pp. 24 f . ( online ).
  9. ↑ We had it under control . In: Der Spiegel . No. 17 , 1992, pp. 40 ff . ( online ).
  10. ↑ Lamb among wolves . In: Der Spiegel . No. 23 , 1993, pp. 65 ( online ).
  11. ↑ a b Rahel von Saß: The "Greifswalder Weg". The GDR church policy and the Protestant regional church Greifswald from 1980 to 1989 , p. 48f.
  12. ^ Robert F. Goeckel: The way of the churches in the GDR . In: Heydemann, Kettenacker (ed.): Churches in the dictatorship. Third Reich and SED state. Fifteen posts . Göttingen 1993, p. 177f.
  13. ^ Clemens Vollnhals : The church political department of the Ministry for State Security . In the S. (Ed.): The Church Policy of the SED and State Security. An interim balance. 2nd Edition. Berlin 1997, p. 91.
  14. ↑ Thomas Auerbach , Matthias Braun, Bernd Eisenfeld , Gesine von Prittwitz, Clemens Vollnhals : Main Department XX: State Apparatus, Block Parties, Churches, Culture, "Political Underground" (MfS Handbook) , publisher: The Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR , Department of Education and Research, Berlin 2008, p. 96, note 38 PDF
  15. ↑ Horst Gienke: Dome, villages, thorn paths. Life report of an old bishop . Rostock 1996, p. 379f.
  16. ↑ Horst Gienke: Dome, villages, thorn paths. Life report of an old bishop . Rostock 1996, quoted by Friedrich Wilhelm Graf : Justification of the pardoned sinner . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . January 9, 1997, No. 7, p. 6.
  17. ↑ Horst Gienke: Dome, villages, thorn paths. Life report of an old bishop . Rostock 1996, p. 368.
  18. ↑ Rahel von Saß: The "Greifswalder Weg". The GDR church policy and the Protestant regional church Greifswald from 1980 to 1989 , p. 49, note 152.
  19. ↑ Thomas Auerbach, Matthias Braun, Bernd Eisenfeld, Gesine von Prittwitz, Clemens Vollnhals : Main Department XX: State Apparatus, Block Parties, Churches, Culture, "Political Underground" (MfS Handbook) , publisher: The Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR , Department of Education and Research, Berlin 2008, p. 96, note 38 PDF
  20. ^ Artur Amthor: Quiet in Rostock? No way . Berlin 2009, pp. 139f.


predecessor Office successor
Friedrich-Wilhelm Krummacher Bishop of the Evangelical Church of Pomerania
1972 - 1989 		Eduard Berger
personal data
SURNAME Gienke, Horst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German clergyman, bishop of the Pomeranian Evangelical Church, unofficial employee of the GDR State Security
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Schwerin