Peter Bickhardt

Peter Bickhardt (born June 13, 1933 in Dresden ; † May 6, 2018 in Radebeul ) was a Protestant pastor who was a representative of the church opposition movement in the GDR .

Bickhardt attended the Kreuzschule in Dresden and, after graduating from high school, studied Protestant theology in Leipzig from 1951 to 1955 . In 1956 he worked in an industrial photo laboratory. After the vicariate and attendance at the seminary, he was pastor in Dresden- Niedersedlitz until 1969 and in Dresden- Pieschen until 1977 . Due to protests against the GDR's Israel policy, the invasion of the Warsaw Pact countries in the Czechoslovak Republic and the falsification of election results, Bickhardt came into conflict with government agencies and was monitored by the Stasi .

From 1977 to 1988 he was the pastor for hospital chaplaincy in Berlin . Since 1982 he was active in the church peace movement and in 1983 took part in the GDR-wide meeting “ Peace in Practice ”. In 1984 he founded the opposition group “Doctors for Peace” with Sebastian Pflugbeil and has been active in the working group “Rejection of Practice and Principle of Demarcation”, which his son Stephan Bickhardt co-founded in 1988 , from which the citizen movement Democracy Now developed, and he became one of its founding members 1989 belonged. From 1988 until his retirement in 1998 he was pastor in Neuenhagen - Dahlwitz .

literature

• Short biography for:  Bickhardt, Peter . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

• Astrid Rose, Birgit Wenzel: Timeline and materials on the Bickhardt family in the GDR. In: bildungsserver.berlin-brandenburg.de. Robert Havemann-Gesellschaft e. V. and State Institute for School and Media Berlin-Brandenburg (LISUM), May 2010, accessed on August 19, 2018 (also as a print version, ISBN 978-3-938857-09-0 ). 
• Obituary notice. In: Saxon newspaper . May 12, 2018