Lutz Rathenow

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Lutz Rathenow (2005)

Lutz Rathenow (born September 22, 1952 in Jena ) is a German poet and prose author . Since March 2011 he has been the Saxon state representative for coming to terms with the SED dictatorship.

life and work

After serving in the GDR border troops , Rathenow began studying German and history at the University of Jena . There he founded and headed the opposition working group Literature and Poetry Jena and established contacts with the East Berlin weekly Weltbühne , saying that it should “more often find the courage to present idiosyncratic literary attempts to the public”. The working group was banned in 1975 by cultural officials and in the background by the Ministry for State Security ("OV Pegasus"). After Wolf Biermann's expatriation in 1976, he was arrested and at the beginning of 1977, three months before his exams, he was de-registered because of “doubts about basic positions, objectivism and intellectualizing problems”.

He then worked as a passenger and transport worker at VEB Carl Zeiss Jena . At the end of 1977 he followed his wife to (East) Berlin, where he worked at the theater and lived as a freelance writer. During this time he wrote some science fiction stories that have also appeared in FRG anthologies.

After the publication of his book With the worst was already reckoned in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1980 Rathenow was subjected to a house search, arrested again and taken to the central remand prison of the GDR State Security . Among other things, Christa Wolf and Günter Grass campaigned for his release from prison ten days later. He stayed in the GDR and turned down offers from the GDR authorities to leave the country. He was active in the independent peace and civil rights movement, u. a. with Bärbel Bohley and Gerd Poppe in the Peace and Human Rights Initiative . He kept close, often conspiratorial contact with Jürgen Fuchs in the western part of the city. This made it difficult for the MfS to arrest him again. Rathenow maintained its own dense information network in East and West, which the Ministry for State Security did not hide. He was bugged extensively.

After the peaceful revolution in the GDR, he was subsequently awarded the final diploma in January 1992 together with his formal rehabilitation from the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena.

Rathenow's special love is children's books. In addition, he works as a radio columnist, children's book author, essayist, also on non-literary topics. The Friedrich Naumann Foundation in particular organizes numerous readings with Lutz Rathenow. He also works for the foundation as editor of the magazine liberal . Usually every six months he organizes the seminar Writing What's In Your Head .

Lutz Rathenow wrote regularly as a freelancer for the weekly newspaper Rheinischer Merkur .

In March 2011, he was nominated by the Saxon Justice Minister Jürgen Martens (FDP) to succeed Michael Beleites as Saxon State Commissioner for the Stasi documents. The confirmation by the Saxon state parliament took place on March 23, 2011.

Lutz Rathenow is married and has two sons.

bibliography

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lutz Rathenow, Jena: Answers , in Weltbühne , Berlin, May 14, 1974, page 636.
  2. ↑ Monsieur, we will find each other again. Letters 1968 - 1984. Aufbau-Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-351-02330-8 , pages 114-116.
  3. ↑ This is presented in detail in: Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk , Arno Polzin (Ed.): Be brief! The opposition's cross-border telephone traffic in the 1980s and the Ministry of State Security. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-525-35115-4 .
  4. ↑ Decision: Lutz Rathenow is to become the Saxon Stasi representative. ( Memento of the original from November 28, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) 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.mdr.de
  5. ↑ gxs / AFP: Saxony: Lutz Rathenow new Stasi officer. In: Focus Online . March 23, 2011, accessed October 14, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Rathenow, Lutz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lyric poet and prose writer
DATE OF BIRTH September 22, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Jena