Martin Kirchner (politician)

Martin Kirchner (born August 9, 1949 in Weimar ) is a former German church lawyer and politician ( CDU of the GDR ). The Deputy Regional Church Council of the Thuringian Evangelical Lutheran Church came during the turn in the GDR , the detachment of the block party east-CDU from the SED with at. In 1989 he became general secretary of his party and in 1990 a member of the People's Chamber , but in the same year he had to give up his political career after becoming an unofficial employee of the GDR State Security .

Life

After graduating from high school , Kirchner completed a law degree in Halle . He joined the CDU in 1967; from 1973 he worked as an employee of the party executive in Berlin . From 1975 to 1986 he was a member of the board of the district church office in Gera ; then he became senior church councilor and deputy chairman of the regional church council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia , and he moved to Eisenach .

In 1989, Martin Kirchner was one of the four signatories of the letter from Weimar , initiated by Gottfried Müller , in which the GDR CDU was asked to "finally perceive the country's urgent problems realistically and unadorned". In the course of the turning point and peaceful revolution in the GDR , Kirchner was at the special party conference of the CDU on 15./16. December 1989 elected general secretary of the party.

On March 16, 1990, three days before the 1990 Volkskammer election , Kirchner's suspicion of IM activity was reported, which Kirchner denied in an interview. With the election he became a member of the first freely elected People's Chamber . Martin Kirchner's career in the party came to an abrupt end on August 2, 1990, when it turned out that he had been an unofficial employee of the State Security (IM Küster and IM Andreas ).

He was released from office and resigned from the CDU in 1991. As a result, Kirchner was no longer politically active, participated in building a supermarket chain and became a partner in a property development company.

Kirchner is married and has one daughter.

literature

• Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Kirchner, Martin . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

• Martin Kirchner's biography . In: Wilhelm H. Schröder : The members of the 10th People's Chamber of the GDR (Volkparl)
• Short biography with photo on chronikderwende.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.freiheit-und-einheit.de/Content/DE/Artikel/2014_Deutsche_Einheit/1989-09-10-der-brief-aus-weimar.html
2. ↑ Erhard Neubert: The letter from Weimar. On the self-liberation of the CDU in autumn 1989 (pdf)
3. ↑ Manfred Agethen: Unrest potentials and reform efforts at the base of the Eastern CDU in the run-up to the turnaround. The "Letter from Weimar" and the "Letter from Neuenhagen" (pdf)
4. ↑ March 16, 1990. Tagesschau (ARD) , March 16, 1990, accessed on July 12, 2018 . 
5. ↑ For God and Adenauer . In: Der Spiegel . No. 43 , 1999 ( online ).
6. ↑ Gray area God . In: Der Spiegel . No. 6 , 1999 ( online ).
7. ^ Reports on the "Kirchner case" in the Eisenach local press in August 1990.