Katja Havemann

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Katja Havemann (born Annedore Grafe ; born November 30, 1947 ) is a German civil rights activist and author.

Life

During her training as a home educator in East Berlin, Havemann sought contact with circles of SED -critical artists and writers in the late 1960s . She met her future husband, the physical chemist, political journalist and civil rights activist Robert Havemann (1910–1982), in 1970 in the apartment of the critical songwriter Wolf Biermann , who was suppressed by the GDR leadership . They married in 1974 shortly after the birth of their daughter Franziska (* 1973).

Katja Havemann supported her husband in his work as a political GDR writer, who despite the surveillance and harassment (including house arrest from 1976 to 1979) by the Ministry for State Security in numerous critical writings and statements in western media against the SED's claim to sole power in the GDR turned. He rejected this as dogmatic and undemocratic.

Havemann made numerous connections of his own in the GDR opposition over the years. After the death of her husband, she continued her political work against the SED regime. In 1982 she was one of the founders of Women for Peace in the GDR (together with Ulrike Poppe and Bärbel Bohley, among others ) and was a member of the Peace and Human Rights Initiative (from 1986).

On September 10, 1989, on the joint initiative of Havemann, Bärbel Bohley and Rolf Henrich, the citizens' movement Neues Forum was founded on the Havemann property in Grünheide near Berlin , which in the following months gave decisive impetus to the peaceful revolution that ultimately led to the end of the SED -Domination and finally led to German reunification .

In September 1990 Katja Havemann took part in the demonstrative occupation of the buildings of the dissolved Ministry for State Security in East Berlin, the aim of which was to secure and open its archives for individual and social processing and research into the SED power apparatus.

In the course of the early 1990s Katja Havemann withdrew from politics, but took part with other GDR contemporary witnesses in the engagement against the concealment strategies of former State Security employees and tried to do so, especially in connection with the debate about the alleged involvement of the former SED- , then PDS - and today's left-wing politician Gregor Gysi , who represented Robert and Katja Havemann as a lawyer in the GDR, to create transparency.

From 1995 to 2000, Katja Havemann was the most important witness before the regional courts in Frankfurt / Oder and Neuruppin in the two criminal proceedings against the GDR lawyers who, under the influence of the SED and partly on instructions from the State Security in 1976 and 1979, for "disturbing the public Order and Security ”to house arrest and for“ foreign exchange offense ”in connection with his publications with Western publishers to a fine. The trials ended with suspended sentences for perverting justice against two former prosecutors.

Awards

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literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Office of the Federal President
personal data
SURNAME Havemann, Katja
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German civil rights activist and author
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1947