Otto Hartmut Fuchs

Otto Hartmut Fuchs (born September 4, 1919 in Schwäbisch Gmünd ; † April 7, 1987 in Berlin ) was a German editor , functionary of the GDR CDU and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime.

Life

Fuchs comes from an educated bourgeois Catholic family and attended the Schwäbisch Gmünd high school . During this time he found connection to a group of the Catholic youth movement, which was organized in the Bund New Germany . As the leader of the group, he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1937 because he continued to work in the association despite the prohibition. In 1938 he began studying Catholic theology in Tübingen , which he continued in Vienna . He did not graduate because he was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1944. After being arrested again, he should be tried for his resistive behavior.

Fuchs went back to Württemberg and joined the newly founded Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime (VVN). He had abandoned the decision to become a priest made in his youth. In Stuttgart he founded the youth magazine “ Das Junge Wort ”, with which he wanted to show Catholic youth a life perspective on a Christian basis. After a few years of editorial work and after internal disputes about the future of the magazine, he left the editorial team and founded a new paper with the title “ The Headlight ”. After this project failed for financial reasons, he moved to the GDR . He became editor-in-chief of the press service of the GDR CDU Union Press Service (Upd) . In the process, he also got into ecclesiastical political controversies between the SED's claim to leadership and different social concepts of the CDU. He was briefly arrested in connection with the " Dertinger Affair ".

He accepted an offer from the National Front of the GDR to develop a magazine for - in contrast to the Catholic Church - system-compliant Catholics. From 1969 to 1977 he was editor-in-chief of the magazine Treffen and since 1977 its publisher.

In 1964 he was one of the co-founders of the Berlin Conference of Catholic Personalities from European States , which was financed through the National Front, organized in close consultation with the SED and with the participation of the GDR State Security . Fuchs was its president from 1970 until his death.

He was a member of the Christian Peace Conference (CFK) and took part in the II All-Christian Peace Assembly organized by it in 1964 in Prague . Since 1972 he was a member of the main CDU board. He also worked for the World Peace Council , in whose Presidium he was elected.

Fuchs was an unofficial employee (IM) of the MfS of the GDR under the code name "Hartmut".

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Publications

• Opening address. Fuchs, Otto Hartmut, Berlin: Berlin Conference, 1970
• Otto Hartmut Fuchs, Germany. blessed with tied hands. For the 55th birthday of the antifascist. Martyrs Alfred Delp, in: Encounter. Mschr. Dt. Katholiken 2, 1962, H. 9, 5. 12 ff.
• Nikolaj Rostworowski: Znak solidarnosei, German editing and translation by Ernst Coltzsch. In the departure of the council. Reflections on Vatican II. Edited and provided with an afterword by Otto Hartmut Fuchs, Berlin: Union-Verlag 1969
• On the progress of peoples: Pope Paul VI. Encyclical "Populorum progressio"; with a foreword by Otto Hartmut Fuchs / ed. from the secretariat of the main board of the Christian-Democratic Union of Germany, = booklets from Burgscheidungen No. 160, Berlin 1967
• German Guzman: Camilo Torres. Personality and Decision, T: Ilse Pérez u. Harald Hildebrand, epilogue: Otto Hartmut Fuchs, Union-Verlag, Berlin / GDR 1972, 377 p., Ill.
• Illustrated for the 9th party congress of the Christian-Democratic Union 1958 [in] Dresden, Berlin W 8: Christian-Democratic Union of Germany, 1958 * Unforgettable days. Dresden: Union-Verl., 1957

Awards

• German Peace Medal

literature

• Bernd Schäfer:  Fuchs, Otto Hartmut . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Siegfried Prokop: The kettle began to sing. Friday , May 30, 2003, accessed December 26, 2010 .