Rita Sélitrenny

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Rita Sélitrenny (born April 15, 1954 in Leipzig ) is a German political scientist , civil rights activist , politician , web designer and consultant. Since the 1970s she lived in resistance to the GDR regime and in the 1980s she belonged to the civil rights movement and to the organized resistance in the GDR. She was active in various church initiatives in Leipzig and Berlin. In the time of the peaceful revolution, she was a driving force at the round tables of the city and the district of Leipzig. Her involvement in the dissolution of the GDR Ministry for State Security up to and including the Stasi Records Act (StUG) was particularly lasting .

Life

Childhood, youth, occupation and education in the GDR

Rita Sélitrenny grew up in Leipzig in simple circumstances. The father fled the Nazis to Spain in 1933 . He had barely returned to Germany when the Soviets arrested the healthy man in 1950 on absurd charges of espionage. Without a trial and without a judgment, he was released from the detention hospital two years later as forever severely disabled. The mother grew up on a small farm in Silesia and was deported to Leipzig in 1947.

The Catholic Church and Christian faith formed the backbone of the family with parents and grandparents. The Jugendweihe declined from Rita from its own motives, which they would suffer disadvantages to the Revolution 1989th As one of the best students at the POS , she was denied the opportunity to graduate from high school.

After an apprenticeship and a job as an archivist , she switched to catering in order to be able to train as a guest student at the Theological Seminary in Leipzig (ThSL) . The ThSL was not only an "island in the red sea" ( Wolf Krötke ) as an educational institution , as the largest of the three non-state Protestant universities in the GDR, it primarily attracted personalities who, in a politically conscious manner, found the GDR state worth overcoming . Many protagonists of the 1989 revolution were students of the ThSL or came from its environment.

In the catering trade, Rita Sélitrenny completed her second skilled worker certificate while working and was allowed to add further training to become a hotel and restaurant manager. As a result of her economically very successful work in large institutions, she rose to leadership positions, but was dismissed in each case due to a lack of party affiliation or government. In the last years of the GDR, Rita Sélitrenny was on the road as a freelance textile designer on the weekend markets that were just emerging all over the GDR.

Political-subversive engagement until the 1989 revolution in the GDR

Since her school days she has been at home in the Catholic community, later also in the Catholic Student Community (KSG). She was involved in the Social Peace Service (SoFd) initiated by Christoph Wonneberger , took part in the Olof Palme Peace March at the end of the 1980s and regularly attended the Monday peace prayers in Leipzig's Nikolaikirche . From autumn 1989 she was a member of the Peace and Human Rights Initiative (IFM) in Leipzig.

The documents that the MfS collected about Rita Sélitrenny in an operational identity check , the OPK “Reform” , go back to 1969; at the time she was a 15-year-old student. In 1980, after the death of her father, the MfS attached parts of his victim files to their files. After the guideline on the planned internment camps in the GDR came into force , the MfS immediately entered Rita Sélitrenny in the relevant list of persons.

Since the occupation of the Stasi headquarters in Leipzig - on December 4, 1989 - she was involved in the dissolution of the MfS and above all in the processing of the MfS. She was a founding member of the citizens' committee to dissolve the MfS / AfNS . The members of the Leipzig Citizens 'Committee had sent her as permanent voting members to the weekly central meetings of the Citizens' Committees as their representative in Berlin.

At the same time, Rita Sélitrenny had a voting seat at the round table of the city of Leipzig and at the round table of the Leipzig district for the IFM until the new elections of the city council in May 1990 .

Work since the unification of Germany

The processing of the activities of the MfS has been one of her priorities in life since the Stasi office was occupied. She has worked with the archive group of the People's Chamber developed, in part, as their elected leader, an initial report on the structures, working methods and networks for the Special Committee of the People's Chamber. After October 3, 1990, she continued this research for a few months in the hard-won special authority for the records of the MfS . After internal disputes as to whether the research should be allowed to continue and the subsequent dissolution of the internal working group, she left the new authority in January 1991.

As the elected representative of the East German Citizens Committee, she immediately began working on the development and preparation up to the adoption of the Stasi Records Act (StUG). After the entry into force of the Stasi Records Act (StUG) at the end of 1991 and the book “The Unheimliche Erbe” published together with Thilo Weichert , a new phase of life began for Rita Sélitrenny.

In the Leipzig city parliament, she was an honorary city councilor in the Alliance 90 / Greens parliamentary group . As a city councilor, she mainly headed the committee of inquiry into the Leipzig housing and construction company (LWB) . Their final report to the Leipzig city council was later the basis for the indictment and conviction of a manager of the LWF.

In Berlin she began studying political science at the Otto Suhr Institute (OSI) at the Free University . Her doctorate took place in 2001 with Peter Steinbach and Wolf-Dieter Narr . The content of studies, doctorates and later teaching activities in Ulrich K. Preuss's department were shaped by the confrontation with GDR, MfS and National Socialism as well as their processing from a comparative perspective.

For various newspapers, etc. a. Süddeutsche Zeitung and Das Parlament she wrote articles about coming to terms with the GDR past and the StUG. From December 1994 to January 1997 Rita Sélitrenny was a member of the federal board of Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen and between 1999 and 2001 a member of the state board of Saxony. Between 1997 and 2004 she was a committed member of the Leipzig-Mitte city district advisory board. From 2001 to 2008, Rita Selitrenny judged as a lay judge at the regional court and between 2009 and 2013 as an honorary judge at the administrative court.

Since around 2004 she worked abroad for a few years. After her return to Germany, a serious illness forced a longer professional break. It was only around 2015 that she began to get involved again in social processes on a voluntary basis, e.g. B. at the dialogues in Leipzig with the followers of Legida .

After an initially provisional (1995), Rita Sélitrenny was finally rehabilitated as a persecuted person in 2012 according to the Administrative Rehabilitation Act (VerwRehaG).

In October 2015, she and 46 other GDR civil rights activists from different political camps signed the open letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel , initiated by Katrin Hattenhauer , in which it says at the beginning: “We support your policy of open borders. We support your refugee policy and your efforts for the sake of the people. With the greatest respect, we see your firm stance on accepting asylum-seekers in Germany [...] 70 years after the Holocaust, Germany opens its borders and saves people from need and death. "

literature

Web links

Commons : Rita Sélitrenny  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Author portrait of Dr. Rita Selitrenny. In: Christoph Links Verlag. Retrieved August 6, 2019 .
  2. ^ Archive Citizens Movement Leipzig: List of the subversive groups with the initiative Peace and Human Rights Leipzig .
  3. ↑ See Acknowledgments in: Way in the Rebellion . ( Memento from December 2, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ See the event of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Round Tables in Leipzig with Dr. Rita Sélitrenny.
  5. ↑ See Jochen Schmidt: BStU - how next? , in: Horch & Guck, issue 49.
  6. ↑ Law on the records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic (Stasi Records Act - StUG) on the Internet.
  7. ↑ See the history of the Alliance 90 / Greens faction .
  8. ↑ See the story of Alliance 90 / The Greens .
  9. ↑ All state boards
  10. ↑ Discussion forum for a Europe of free citizens with open borders.
  11. ↑ Administrative Rehabilitation Act (VerwRehaG) on the Internet.
  12. ↑ Deutsche Welle: The open letter to Angela Merkel in the wording on refugee and asylum policy of October 23, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Sélitrenny, Rita
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political scientist and GDR civil rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig