Jürgen Fuchs (writer)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jürgen Fuchs at a reading in a Saalfeld grammar school in 1990

Jürgen Fuchs (* 19th December 1950 in Reichenbach im Vogtland ; † 9. May 1999 in Berlin ) was a German writer , civil rights activists and representatives of the opposition in the GDR , who even after his Zwangsausbürgerung by the Stasi in the West continue to monitor and decomposition measures was fought.

Life

Jürgen Fuchs came into conflict with the GDR authorities early on . His critical expressions of opinion during the student protests and the Prague Spring in 1968 were punished by the school administration. In 1969, Fuchs graduated from high school and then did his basic military service with the NVA . Since he was initially denied access to studies, he initially completed a skilled worker qualification at the Deutsche Reichsbahn in the same year .

Since he had called the school board as "politically unreliable", it took an entry before he studies in social psychology at the 1971 University of Jena could begin. In 1973 he became a member of the SED . He wrote poetry and worked with the Working Group literature and poetry Jena to Lutz Rathenow together. After appearing together with Bettina Wegner and Gerulf Pannach , the lyricist of the band Renft , he was expelled from the SED and the FDJ in 1975 . Shortly before graduation - the diploma thesis had already been rated "very good" - Jürgen Fuchs was condemned for his poems and prose works by the disciplinary committee of the University of Jena under Professor Paul for "exclusion from all universities, colleges and technical schools of the GDR" and politically forcibly de-registered. A job as a psychologist was no longer possible for him.

Jürgen Fuchs one day after his release from prison in West Berlin, August 27, 1977

In Jena Jürgen Fuchs met the psychology student Lieselotte Uschkoreit ("Lilo"), they married in 1974. In 1975 their daughter Lili was born. After his political de-registration on June 17, 1975, the family moved into Katja and Robert Havemann's garden house in Grünheide near Berlin. Fuchs worked in a church welfare institution. After protests against the expatriation of Wolf Biermann , Jürgen Fuchs was on 19 November 1976 because of " State Enemy baiting arrested" two days before Gerulf Pannach and Christian Kunert whose band Renft had been banned in the fall 1975th After 281 days of imprisonment in the prison of the Ministry for State Security in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen and international protests, Pannach, Fuchs and Kunert were forced to leave the country in 1977 under threat of long prison sentences and deported to West Berlin . In his book Interrogation Protocols , Fuchs recounts the interrogations from prison from memory. The Stasi files later confirmed his account. The historian Hubertus Knabe wrote: "If you read the 88 interrogation protocols and the more than 60 pages of interrogation plans, you are still shocked today by the mercilessness with which the Stasi employees pestered the young author."

In West Berlin, Jürgen Fuchs worked as a freelance writer and since 1980 also as a social psychologist in the project Treffpunkt Waldstrasse , a contact and advice center for problem young people. Heinrich Böll , Manès Sperber , Rudi Dutschke , Heinz Brandt , Herta Müller , Hans Joachim Schädlich , Adam Zagajewski and Manfred Wilke were among his friends. He was involved in the peace movement and kept in touch with the independent peace and citizens' movement in the GDR , the Czech Charter 77 and the Polish Solidarność and discussed taboos of real socialism such as state security and the ransom of prisoners. The Ministry for State Security of the GDR (MfS) initiated an investigation ( ZOV "Opponent") against Jürgen Fuchs in 1982 and exposed him and his surroundings to numerous " disruptive measures ". These included a bomb attack in front of his house in 1986 and the sabotage of the brake hoses on his car. Planning by Department VIII of the MfS for observation and transit traffic from 1988 saw, as Stasi documents describe it, the temporary attachment of an unspecified, "required object ... for a specific measure" in the ventilation shaft under the house entrance door of Fuchs by the West Berlin IM " Genoa ” , but the order was withdrawn.

Jürgen Fuchs (far right) at a recital by oppositional artists in the House of Young Talents , December 1989

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Jürgen Fuchs has made particular efforts to clear up the crimes of the Stasi. Since 1991 he has worked temporarily in the field of education and research for the officer responsible for the records of the State Security Service of the former GDR , whose advisory board he left in 1997 in protest against the employment of former Stasi employees. In the same year he got leukemia . On January 2, 1992, he was one of the first to be allowed to inspect her Stasi files.

Jürgen Fuchs caused a sensation and criticism in December 1991 when he used the term “Auschwitz in the Souls” to describe what the State Security had achieved with political imprisonment and “disruptive measures” against at least six million people in the GDR. The poet and songwriter Wolf Biermann , son of the Jewish communist Dagobert Biermann who was murdered in Auschwitz and also a target of "disruptive measures" by the State Security, explicitly defended him.

tomb

Fuchs died in 1999 as a result of his illness. His illness-related death fueled the suspicion that he had been deliberately exposed to gamma rays as a prisoner of the Stasi . His friend Wolf Biermann wrote: “His death at the age of 48 is one of the clues. Fuchs died of a blood cancer that indicates radiation damage. ”The then Federal Commissioner for Stasi Records, Joachim Gauck, initiated a scientific investigation. After extensive research, the Gauck authorities could not determine that radioactive substances or X-rays were used specifically to damage opposition members. However, the investigation revealed various frivolous uses of radioactive substances by the state security, for example for the marking of banknotes that were sent in letters and were intended to investigate postal theft, or for the radioactive marking of manuscripts of the SED critic Rudolf Bahro . Fuchs found his final resting place in the Berlin Heidefriedhof (grave site D VII 335/36).

Works

Part I: The "Operational Process" Fuchs . In: Der Spiegel . No. 47 , 1991, pp. 280-291 ( Online - Nov. 18, 1991 ).
Part II: Pegasus, spider, jellyfish, apostle . In: Der Spiegel . No. 48 , 1991, pp. 72-92 ( Online - Nov. 25, 1991 ).
Part III: "Decomposition" until death . In: Der Spiegel . No. 49 , 1991, pp. 94-108 ( Online - Dec. 2, 1991 ).
Part IV: “Action Counter Strike” in the name of peace . In: Der Spiegel . No. 50 , 1991, pp. 103-121 ( online - December 9, 1991 ).
Part V: Against the “counter-revolution” in Poland . In: Der Spiegel . No. 51 , 1991, pp. 118-130 ( online - 16 December 1991 ).

Awards

Honors

Jürgen-Fuchs-Platz, in Berlin-Dahlem

In the year of his death, Jürgen Fuchs was posthumously awarded the Hans Sahl Prize for his life's work .

At the request of the Thuringian state parliament, the new access road to the main gate was named after the deceased writer and GDR civil rights activist Jürgen Fuchs on December 20, 2002 as a commemoration and in honor of the latter .

A library in his home town of Reichenbach in Vogtland has been named after him since 2001. On May 9, 2011, the 12th anniversary of his death, a previously unnamed square in Berlin-Dahlem, at Königin-Luise-Strasse and the corner of Arnimallee , was named Jürgen-Fuchs-Platz . The laudators were Wolf Biermann and Ralph Giordano . On the same day, at a memorial event in the Thuringian state parliament with Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller, a multimedia stele developed by students was unveiled.

Literary figure

  • The writer Reiner Kunze lets Jürgen Fuchs appear in a story of his prose volume The wonderful years published in Germany in 1976 . In it, the protagonist Jürgen the narrator describes an attempt at spying by a female IM from the Stasi. This goes back to a true incident.
  • In the satirical novel Der Barbier von Bebra (1996) by the writers Wiglaf Droste and Gerhard Henschel , Jürgen Fuchs is caricatured as a figure who barbs in the cellars of the Gauck authorities and is then killed by drowning in a barrel filled with Sulfrin. Jürgen Fuchs was already seriously ill with cancer at this point.
  • After the death of his friend, Wolf Biermann wrote the song Jürgen Fuchs and published it on the CD Paradies uff Erden. A Berliner Bilderbogen , LiederProduktion Altona 1999 (Wolf-Biermann-Edition 20).
  • In his immigrant novel “The Prince of Berlin” (Quadriga Verlag, Berlin 2000), the writer Marko Martin lets Jürgen Fuchs appear in the guise of a courageous social therapist; his volume of essays “Treffpunkt '89” (Wehrhahn Verlag, Hannover 2014) is dedicated to the memory of Jürgen Fuchs.
  • The expatriate author Axel Reitel , who was friends with Jürgen Fuchs, set his poem “Headlight” to music in 1999 and published it on his CD “without knocking” on May 15, 2000.
  • The Prague rock musician Mikoláš Chadima released the CD “Tagesnotizen” in 2002, for which he set poems from Jürgen Fuchs' poetry band of the same name to music.
  • The writer Utz Rachowski portrayed Jürgen Fuchs in his essay "The colors of the early fox", published in the volume "Red 'mir nicht von Minnigerode", Dresden 2006.
  • The Nobel Prize for Literature Laureate Herta Müller wrote the essay “The view of the small train stations” about Jürgen Fuchs, which she read for the audio book “Das Ende einer Feigheit” (Audiobook Hamburg 2010) and which in 2011 in her volume of essays “Always the same snow and always the same Onkel ”was published by Carl Hanser Verlag Munich.

literature

Web links

Commons : Jürgen Fuchs  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. See Jürgen Fuchs - poet, psychologist, civil rights activist , published by the President of the Berlin House of Representatives, Berlin 2010, p. 41.
  2. Esther Dischereit: His first reader and discussant. Heinrich Böll Foundation , September 4, 2014, accessed on November 16, 2016 .
  3. ^ Peter Wensierski: GDR critic Jürgen Fuchs. Secret mail from the public enemy. Spiegel online, September 8, 2014, accessed on September 12, 2014 .
  4. ^ Death of a dissident. May 9, 2019, accessed on May 13, 2019 (German).
  5. Wolf Biermann: OBITUARY: Death is great . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1999 ( online ).
  6. ^ Poet and dissident. Ten years ago, on May 9, 1999, the GDR opposition member Jürgen Fuchs died. (No longer available online.) In: RevolutionundEinheit.de. May 9, 2009, archived from the original on March 7, 2016 ; accessed on November 16, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.friedlicherevolution.de
  7. Cordula Eubel: At the wrong address, dissident Jürgen Fuchs and the Left in Erfurt . In: Der Tagesspiegel . December 29, 2008 ( tagesspiegel.de [accessed November 16, 2016]).
  8. http://www.pnn.de/sport/597001/
  9. See speech by Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk on the occasion of the inauguration of Jürgen-Fuchs-Platz on May 9, 2011. Wording of the speech ( memento from January 17, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 38 kB)
  10. BStU, ZA, IM file "Genua", A 377/81, vol. 4, p. 148, meeting report of HA VIII with IM "Genua" from February 3, 1988. Doc. In: BStU: Report on the project " Use of X-rays and radioactive substances by the MfS against opposition members - fiction or reality? ” , Berlin 2000, pp. 209–217, here p. 215.
  11. A public ulcer . In: Der Spiegel . No. 3 , 1992, p. 166 ( online - Wolf Biermann answers his critics in an open letter to Lew Kopelew, pp. 158–167).
  12. Peter Wensierski: Aligned at head height . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1999, p. 42-44 ( online ).
  13. See also representation by Udo Scheer: Jürgen Fuchs. A literary way into the opposition . Row: Imprisoned in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. Berlin 2007, p. 358 ff.
  14. Wolf Biermann: The hatred never stops . In: Der Spiegel . No. 51 , 2008, p. 159 ( online ).
  15. Wolf Biermann : Don't wait for better times, Berlin 2016
  16. Gauck: Stasi used radioactive pins . Spiegel Online, March 17, 2000
  17. ^ At the wrong address, dissident Jürgen Fuchs and Die Linke in Erfurt. Der Tagesspiegel December 29, 2008 .; Claus-Peter Müller: Erfurt. Not at this address. Faz dated December 9, 2008; Christian Nürnberger : Courageous people: For peace, freedom and human rights. Thienemann / Gabriel, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-522-30158-9 .
  18. ^ Jürgen Fuchs Library. In: www.reichenbach-vogtland.de. City administration Reichenbach im Vogtland, accessed on November 16, 2016 .
  19. Monument of the Month 2011. In: www.berlin.de. November 20, 2014, accessed November 16, 2016 .
  20. ^ Chronicle of Steglitz-Zehlendorf. In: www.berlin.de. November 11, 2014, accessed November 16, 2016 .
  21. Small Chronicle of the Free University of Berlin | 2005–2016 |. (No longer available online.) In: web.fu-berlin.de. Archived from the original on November 16, 2016 ; accessed on November 16, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / web.fu-berlin.de
  22. Frank Quilitzsch: A stele for the silent rebel Jürgen Fuchs . In: Ostthüringer Zeitung . May 9, 2011 ( otz.de [accessed November 16, 2016]).
  23. ^ Gudrun Schmidt: Wiglaf Droste / Gerhard Henschel: The barber of Bebra. In: www.luise-berlin.de. 1998, accessed November 16, 2016 .
  24. https://www.welt.de/print-welt/article536019/Aus-Plauen.html
  25. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PecsOTlXEHI&t=67s