Bronislaw Wildstein

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Bronislaw Wildstein

Bronisław Wildstein (born June 11, 1952 in Olsztyn , Poland ) is a former Polish opposition activist, journalist and writer. From May 11, 2006 to February 27, 2007 he was the managing director of Poland's public television company Telewizja Polska .

He became known nationwide at the end of January 2005 when he circulated a list with the names of former employees and victims of the Polish Stasi counterpart Służba Bezpieczeństwa (SB, "Security Service"), which had been leaked to him from the Institute for National Remembrance .

Life

Wildstein studied Polish philology from 1971 to 1980 at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow . In the 1970s he was a member of the opposition committee for the defense of workers (KOR) and in 1977 co-founder of the Kraków Student Solidarity Committee (Studencki Komitet Solidarności) . From 1980 he lived in France , where he worked, among other things, as editor of the Polish monthly magazine Kontakt and as a correspondent for Radio Free Europe .

After the fall of the Wall he returned to Poland and worked for the traditional Warsaw daily Życie Warszawy from 1994 to 1996 . He then followed Tomasz Wołek as deputy editor-in-chief (until 1997) of the daily Życie , before he was a permanent employee of the daily Rzeczpospolita .

Wildstein and the argument about lustration

background

In his articles and books, Wildstein vehemently advocates a failure to settle accounts with the communist past in Poland after the fall of the Wall , in particular for disclosure of all persons with contacts to the SB security service at the time.

The so-called Lustracja (d. I. Lustration ) - d. H. a screening of public figures for contacts with the communist security apparatus - had only taken place selectively and not very consistently until then. The lustracja since the end of communism a central theme of social conflict between two camps, from the former democratic opposition in KOR and Solidarity have emerged:

  • The left-liberal, intellectual wing, represented in particular by Adam Michnik and his Gazeta Wyborcza , the largest Polish daily newspaper, advocate a social reconciliation between former functionaries and opponents of the People's Republic , which should be based on a renunciation of comprehensive "screening" and political revenge. This attitude is also referred to with the catchphrase of the "thick line" (gruba kreska) under the past, which was coined by the first non-communist Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki .
  • The right-wing conservative wing criticizes this position as conciliatory and demands that all people born before 1972 who hold or aspire to leadership positions in politics, business or the media be systematically examined.

In the dispute over the "screening", Wildstein was one of the most prominent opponents of the "bottom line". In 2001 he contributed to the exposure of a prominent former informant of the Polish security service SB: Lesław Maleszka, formerly a close student friend of Wildstein, now an employee of the left-wing liberal Gazeta Wyborcza , as IM "Ketman" observed the Krakow Student Solidarity Committee (Studencki Komitet Solidarności) , which he founded in 1977 together with Wildstein and others.

Wildstein's list

With Wildstein's active participation, the controversy over the screening finally reached a climax at the beginning of 2005: Under circumstances that had not yet been clarified, Wildstein received from the Institute for National Remembrance (IPN), which - analogous to the German Gauck authority - also manages the files of the communist security service , an inventory list with the names of 162,617 people, about which a file ( teczka in Polish ) from the holdings of the communist apparatus is available in the IPN .

Wildstein brought the data on CD-ROM to the editorial office of his employer Rzeczpospolita and then distributed them to journalists who were friends, whereupon they were published a little later by private individuals on the Internet and can be accessed there.

The public debate began when, on January 29, 2005, Gazeta Wyborcza made public and criticized the theft and dissemination of the data known as the "Wildstein's List". The fact that the (incomplete) list only contains the names of persons for whom a file is available, but no information about whether they are permanent or occasional employees or victims, caused irritation. To make matters worse, the practice of totalitarian apparatus makes a factually and ethically correct subsequent differentiation between perpetrators and victims difficult or impossible in many cases. Identical names also make it difficult to deal with the list. Wildstein himself stated that he only acquired and passed on the list as a working tool for investigative journalism . It is now assumed that he acted with the tacit consent or active assistance of employees of the IPN.

While some see Wildstein's actions as a cause of a climate of mutual suspicion and a threat to social peace, others see it as a courageous act that forces an overdue confrontation with the past, that of communist clans in politics and business and value-relativist liberal opinion leaders in has so far been taken to the media.

On January 31, 2005 - two days after the Gazeta Wyborcza published his actions - Wildstein was dismissed by the editor-in-chief of the Rzeczpospolita; However, he should still be able to write articles as a freelancer. With this step the paper tried to distance itself from the advocates of fluoroscopy and to keep itself out of the debate. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in front of the editorial house for solidarity rallies. “We are not afraid of the truth” read their banners. The following day (February 1) the Polish news magazine Wprost Wildstein offered a job and said it would publish the list itself if it was “technically possible”. Numerous other journalists and public figures spoke out in favor of Wildstein, including Józef Glemp .

Fonts

  • Anti-communism after communism . In: Paweł Śpiewak (ed.): Anti-totalitarianism. A Polish debate . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2003 ( Thinking and Knowledge Series . A Polish Library ). ISBN 3-518-41484-4 . Pp. 527-542.
  • The Camp of the Chosen (translation by Herbert Ulrich), LIT Verlag, Berlin - Münser - Vienna - Zurich - London 2019, ISBN 978-3-643-14510-9 .

literature

Web links

Commons : Bronisław Wildstein  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ original version (Polish); Original and extended version (Polish / English)
  2. ^ Poisoned Atmosphere , Spiegel, March 26, 2005
  3. ^ "Wprost" za Wildsteinem. wprost.pl, February 1, 2005
personal data
SURNAME Wildstein, Bronislaw
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 11, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Olsztyn , Poland