Renate Huertgen

Renate Hürtgen , born Renate Müller (born November 7, 1947 in East Berlin ), is a German historian , philosopher and civil rights activist . She was involved in the GDR opposition and was a co-founder of the Initiative for Independent Trade Unions (IUG) in 1989/90 .

Life

Renate Hürtgen, b. Müller, attended a ten-class polytechnic high school in Berlin-Karlshorst from 1953 to 1963 . She then completed a technical college education at the teacher training institute in Berlin-Köpenick , which she finished as a lower school teacher. After a brief activity in this profession, she began studying cultural studies and aesthetics at the Humboldt University in Berlin (HUB), where she received her doctorate in 1978 on the subject of " The French utopian socialist Charles Fourier's conception of socialism ". Due to the passing on of the original manuscript of the book " Die Alternative " by Rudolf Bahro , which was later published in the West, she and her husband at the time, Joachim Hürtgen , had to leave the HUB. Renate Hürtgen got a job as a cultural advisor at the Berlin School of Economics . After three years in this position, she was hired in 1980 as a research assistant in the history of philosophy department of the Central Institute for Philosophy at the GDR Academy of Sciences . There she worked until it was dissolved in 1992, where she did research on the French and German Enlightenment, without ever having the opportunity to publish her work until 1989 as an independent scientist.

Since 1987 Renate and Joachim Hürtgen have been involved in the opposition peace group Friedrichsfelde , in which well-known GDR civil rights activists such as Thomas Klein and Reinhard Schult were active. Here Hürtgen was involved in the preparation of an anti- IMF congress jointly organized by activists from East and West Berlin in 1988 . On October 27, 1989, together with Bernd Gehrke , Joachim Hürtgen and Thomas Klein, she was part of the founding group of the short-lived opposition Robert Havemann group in the Kulturbund of the GDR , in which members of the opposition and critical SED members worked together for the democratization of the GDR. Renate Hürtgen was its deputy chairwoman.

In October 1989 Renate Hürtgen founded the Initiative for Independent Trade Unions (IUG) together with Joachim Hürtgen and other GDR opposition members . The IUG became known to the general public when the writer and theater director Heiner Müller read the initiative's appeal written by Hürtgen during the Alexanderplatz demonstration on November 4, 1989, which was broadcast on GDR television and attended by half a million people.

After the intervention of the DGB trade unions in the GDR since February 1990 and the transfer of most of the FDGB members to these unions, the goals of the grassroots IUG to an independent anti-bureaucratic trade union movement failed, a small group of the IUG started under the leadership of Hürtgen im May 1990 a new initiative for a critical accompaniment of the German trade union unit by company and trade union activists from the GDR opposition and from West Berlin. This resulted in the Initiative for Critical Trade Union Work (IKG) in June 1990 . In December 1990, Hürtgen, together with East Berlin factory and trade union activists, including members of the East Berlin United Left and the Labor Department of the West Berlin Alternative List, set up the Alliance of Critical Trade Unionists East / West (BKG). Until 1997, this alliance, in which a broad spectrum of left-wing company activists were involved, critically accompanied the development of the western trade unions in the east, the company struggles of the workforce against the trusteeship policy and organized numerous solidarity campaigns for militant workforces in the east and west, for example in 1993 for the miners of the Thomas Müntzer potash mine in Bischofferode .

Since the end of the BKG, Renate Hürtgen has continued to be active in the grassroots social movement. In 1999 she was one of the initiators of a call to boycott the Kosovo war , which earned her an indictment of calling on soldiers to desert; however, the proceedings before the Berlin Regional Court ended with an acquittal. In 2003 she was one of the initiators of the first anti- Hartz alliance founded in Berlin and the movement against the introduction of Hartz IV that emerged throughout the whole of Germany ; In 2004 she was actively involved in the Berlin Monday demonstrations as well as in the organization of a nationwide large-scale demonstration against social cuts in Berlin, in which 110,000 people took part. She also took part in a solidarity group for the Ver.di strike activist Barbara Emme, who became known as the Kaisers cashier " Emmely " because she successfully fought against her dismissal on the pretext of stealing a deposit worth 1.30 euros to have.

Hürtgen is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Human Dignity and Working World Foundation as well as the Board of Trustees of the House of Democracy and Human Rights Foundation in Berlin. Since 2003 she has been working with Bernd Gehrke and Willi Hajek in the working group History of Social Movements East-West, of which Richard Herding was one of the founders . This working group has its seat in the House of Democracy and Human Rights, where it organizes numerous educational events for the left wing. As a critical trade unionist, Hürtgen supports global grassroots initiatives that defend their rights in a self-determined manner. She belongs to the extended editorial team of the socialist company and trade union newspaper express .

Renate Hürtgen wrote radio plays in the 1980s; she belongs to the founding group of the publishing house Henschel Schauspiel, which was newly founded in 1990 .

science

After the dissolution of the Academy of Sciences in the GDR , Renate Hürtgen worked on various scientific projects on the topics of "Transformation of trade unions in the new federal states" and "Women from the new federal states". This resulted in her book “ Frauenwende - Wendefrauen ”. Between 1997 and 2012 she was a research assistant at the Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam . Her topics were and are the history of workers and employees in the GDR, everyday life and relations of domination in GDR operations, the situation of women in the GDR, the role of state security in everyday life in the GDR, the events of autumn 1989 in the GDR and the Character of the " turning point ". She has published several books and numerous articles in anthologies on these topics. Most recently, in 2014, she published a monograph on the GDR applications for leaving the GDR in the Halberstadt district . She sees her books and numerous articles as a contribution to the social history of the GDR. In addition, she publishes on topics of an emancipatory society.

Works

Monographs / editor

• Women turn - turn women. Women in the first company interest groups in the new federal states , Verlag Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster 1997.
• with Bernd Gehrke, ed., The operational start in autumn 1989: the unknown side of the GDR revolution. Discussion-analysis documents , Bildungswerk Berlin of the HBS, Berlin 2001.
• with Thomas Reichel, ed., The appearance of stability "GDR operational life in the Honecker era ", Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2001.
• Between discipline and participation. FDGB shop stewards in GDR operations , Böhlau Cologne Weimar Vienna, 2005.
• Employed in the VEB. Loyalties, power resources and social situations of industrial employees in the GDR , Verlag Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster 2009.
• Departure by application: the long way over there. A study of rule and everyday life in the GDR province , analyzes and documents Volume 36, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Göttingen 2014.

Article (selection)

• The establishment of trade unions in the Frankfurt (Oder) urban area, in: Umbruch. Contributions to social transformation. Studies - Analyzes - Viewpoints , No. 9, ed. from the Social Science Research Center Berlin-Brandenburg eV, Berlin 1996.
• I don't let the experience take away from me! Attempts at democracy by the workforce in GDR companies between October 1989 and January 1990 , in: Bernd Gehrke / Wolfgang Rüddenklau (ed.): ... that wasn't our alternative. GDR oppositionists ten years after the fall of the Wall , Verlag Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster 1999, pp. 200–221.
• Development in stagnation? Or: What is so exciting about everyday operations in the GDR in the 70s and 80s? , in: Renate Hürtgen / Thomas Reichel (eds.), The Shine of Stability - Daily Life in the GDR in the Honecker era , Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2001.
• How Heiner Müller came to his speech at Alexanderplatz on November 4, 1989 , in: Bernd Gehrke / Renate Hürtgen (eds.): The operational departure in autumn 1989: The unknown side of the GDR revolution. Discussion-Analysis-Documents , Bildungswerk Berlin der HBS, Berlin 2001, pp. 165–167.
• Nobody had any idea about democracy, in the company anyway. "From collective resistance to submission or why the workforce was at the beginning of a new beginning in 1989 , in: Bernd Gehrke / Renate Hürtgen (ed.): The operational start in autumn 1989: The unknown side of the GDR revolution, discussion and analysis documents , Bildungswerk Berlin der HBS, Berlin 2001, pp. 183–203.
• FDGB shop stewards in the seventies and eighties: inoperative in the large GDR functionary state? , in: Till Kössler, Helke Stadtland (ed.) On the functioning of functionaries. Political lobbying and social integration in Germany after 1933 , Klartext Verlag, Essen 2004, pp. 157–178.
• The right hand of the MfS in the company - the security officer , in: Potsdamer Bulletin for Contemporary History Studies, No. 32/33, November / December 2004, pp. 38–44.
• The GDR enterprise as a conflict and domination-free zone? On the conflict behavior of workers in the seventies and eighties , in: Hermann-J-Rupieper, Friederike Sattler, Georg Wagner-Kyora (eds.), The Central German Chemical Industry and their Workers in the 20th Century , Mitteldeutscher Verlag Halle, 2005, p. 259-286.
• Conflict behavior of the GDR workers and state repression in transition , in: Peter Hübner, Christoph Kleßmann, Klaus Tenfelde (ed.) Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus. Ideological claim and social reality , Böhlau Verlag, Cologne Weimar Vienna 2005, pp. 383–403.
• Employees in the GDR industrial company and their relationship to the workers , in: Germany Archive 2/2006, pp. 225–235.
• Stasi in production. Scope, extent and effect of secret police control in GDR operations , in: Jens Giesecke (ed.), State Security and Society. Studies on everyday rule in the GDR , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, pp. 295–317.
• Socialization and participation or: What do you find in the search for socialist alternatives in the VEB? , in: PROKLA 155 (2009), pp. 325-343.
• How socialistic was the real existing socialism? Or: What is written on it is not always included in: Self-help group Egg of Communism (SEK) What to do with communism ?! Capitalism - Really Existing Socialism - Concrete Utopias Today , Unrast Verlag, Münster 2013, pp. 170–187.
• Decline and new beginning of an autonomous workers' movement in the GDR , in: Through night to light? History of the Labor Movement 1863 - 2013 , Catalog for the Great State Exhibition 2013, ed. from TECHNOSEUM Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg 2013, pp. 287-307.
• The miracle of Halberstadt , in: Autumn 1989 in the GDR province , booklet on the East German history, ed. by Helle Panke, Berlin 2015, pp. 32–49.
• More than breaking a taboo: Left history before a new beginning , in: Author's collective Loukanikos (ed.) History is unwritten. Left historical politics and critical science , edition assemblage, Münster 2015, pp. 287–298.

Web links

• Official website
• Renate Hürtgen on the Henschel Schauspiel website
• Renate Hürtgen's biography in the FDGB lexicon

supporting documents

• Erhart Neubert: History of the Opposition in the GDR 1949-1989, Berlin 1997, p. 733.
• Dr. Leonore Ansorg / Dr. Renate Hürtgen: “BUT NOW THERE ARE INITIATIVE PEOPLE AND YOU HAVE TO SEE ALL OF THEM TO ONE TABLE.” The work of the Initiative for Independent Trade Unions (IUG) from October 1989 to October 1990. Presentation and documents , Berlin workbooks and reports on social science research , Free University of Berlin, Central Institute for Social Science Research, 1992.
• Erhart Neubert: History of the Opposition in the GDR 1949-1989 , Berlin 1997, p. 849.
• Martin Jander: "Formation and Crisis of the GDR Opposition". The initiative for independent trade unions. Dissidents between Democracy and Romanticism , Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1996.
• Bernd Gehrke: The beginning and end of the initiative for independent trade unions in the former East Germany 1989/90 or Martin Jander's resolution of the East German opposition , part 1 to part 4.1, Telegraph magazine, East Berlin, No. 8-9 / 1996 - 1/1997 {A short history of the IUG can be found in Part 1, Telegraph 8-9 / 1996, pp. 54–63}
• Bernd Gehrke: The FDGB meets behind closed doors - we talk and act openly! A reading aid for the documents of the internal turning point , in: Bernd Gehrke / Renate Hürtgen, The operational break-up in autumn 1989: The unknown side of the GDR revolution. Discussion and analysis documents , Bildungswerk Berlin of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Berlin 2001, pp. 288-320; http://www.ddr89.de/ddr89/iug/inhalt_iug.html (ext. Link)
• Renate Hürtgen: How Heiner Müller came to his speech on November 4, 1989 at Alexanderplatz , in: Bernd Gehrke / Renate Hürtgen, The operational start in autumn 1989: The unknown side of the GDR revolution. Discussion-analysis documents , Bildungswerk Berlin of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Berlin 2001, pp. 165–167.
• Cornelia Geissler: Bischofferode Potash Works Resistance to the economy of the powerful . Berliner Zeitung of June 30, 2013, accessed on August 17, 2017.
• Henry Bernhard: hunger strike in the potash plant . mdr.de from June 8, 2011, accessed on August 17, 2017.