Irene Runge

Irene Runge, b. Alexan (born November 3, 1942 in New York ) is a German sociologist and publicist .

Life

Runge spent the first years of his life in the USA , where her father Alexander Kupfermann (July 12, 1901 - January 11, 1994), as Georg Friedrich Alexan writer and translator, had emigrated in the 1930s. In 1949 the family returned to Germany, the GDR .

Runge attended the Ossietzky high school in Berlin, from which she was expelled in 1959. After that, she worked as a helper at ADN and radio. From 1968 to 1970 she made up her Abitur in evening school. From 1970 to 1975 she studied economics and sociology at the Humboldt University in Berlin , where she received her doctorate in 1979 with the thesis Social Aspects of Aging in Old and Old Age . She then taught sociology there until 1990 and was project manager for social gerontology. However, she lost her job because she had been registered as IM "Stefan" at the Ministry of State Security for 17 years in the 1960s and 1970s and in 1963 denounced four acquaintances who were planning to flee the GDR . For this she had received a reward of 250 marks. The four acquaintances received prison terms.

From 1983 to 1989 she was an active member and successor candidate for the board of the Jewish Community in Berlin (East) . In 1986, Runge and other East German intellectuals of Jewish origin founded the group We for us - Jews for Jews , from which the Jewish Cultural Association Berlin emerged at the beginning of 1990 , of which she was chairwoman. Since 1990 she has been co-editor of the papers for German and international politics . It is primarily committed to the migration of Jews from the successor states of the Soviet Union and their cultural and social integration .

Publications

• On some social aspects of aging and old age in socialist society . Berlin 1980.
• Getting older - being old. Social and cultural aspects of aging in socialism . Berlin 1982.
• All in family. Thoughts on a much discussed topic . Berlin 1985.
• Heavenly Hell Manhattan . Berlin 1986.
• with Kurt Pätzold : Pogrom Night 1938 . Berlin 1988.
• You shouldn't always say Holland. A sketchbook . Berlin 1988.
• Abroad GDR. Xenophobia . Berlin 1990.
• Six weeks in Jerusalem. A travel report . Berlin 1990.
• with Uwe Stelbrink : Gregor Gysi : "I am an opposition". 2 conversations with Gregor Gysi . Berlin 1990.
• with Uwe Stelbrink: Markus Wolf : "I'm not a spy". Conversations with Markus Wolf . Berlin 1990.
• Coming and staying. Eastern European Jewish immigrants in Berlin . Berlin 1992.
• with Margarete Mitscherlich : culture shock. Dealing with Germans . Hamburg 1993.
• "I am not Russian". Jewish immigration between 1989 and 1994 . Berlin 1995.
• Ralf Bachmann and Irene Runge (eds.): WIR - Der Jüdische Kulturverein e. V. 1989-2009. Wellhöfer, Mannheim 2009, ISBN 978-3-939540-43-4 .
• How I found my Berlin in Jewish Manhattan - Travel, Arrival, Life , Culture Machines Berlin 2012. ISBN 978-3-940274-61-8

literature

• Bernd-Rainer Barth :  Runge, Irene . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Christine-Félice Roehrs: Being Jewish was out of the question for a long time . In: Die Zeit , No. 10/2000.

Web links

• Literature by and about Irene Runge in the catalog of the German National Library
• "At the right time in the right place" - via the Berlin Jewish Cultural Association

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Henryk M. Broder: The useful idiots on: Spiegel online , September 25 1995th