Rolf Dieter Winkler

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Program of the Leipzig University Film Club from 1964
Pastor Hartmut Grüber (son of Heinrich Grüber) and Dieter Winkler (left) on September 30, 1993

(Rolf) Dieter Winkler (born March 23, 1942 in Leipzig ) is a German cultural worker, regional historian , author and editor .

Life

After graduating from high school in 1960, Rolf Dieter Winkler worked for two years as an electric cart driver in the Leipzig company VEB lathe factory . In the opinion of the responsible staff at Karl Marx University , he should become even more aware of the working class before starting a degree . During these two years, however, he was terrified by the inefficiency of the economic system inherited from the Soviet Union . Reading the first forbidden books ( The Revolution dismisses its children , The New Class , 1984 ) revised his view of history and he understood during a family visit to West Germany in March 1961 that there was no “dying capitalism” going on there. When he started studying History- Marxism / Leninism in the autumn of 1962, he read in the only library in Leipzig in which this was then possible without a permit, non-Leninist Marxists such as Eduard Bernstein , Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg . After a criticism and self-criticism event in the second semester, at which he had to justify himself for political mistakes in his study behavior, he was able to switch to studying cultural and literary studies.

Winkler became a member of the student film club, which in the film art theater "Casino", approx. 250 m from the old university building, publicly presented films from neighboring countries Poland , Hungary and the Czechoslovak Republic that were not bought by the GDR cultural authorities. Through younger scholars he was given access to regular reading of the West German newspapers Die Zeit and Vorwärts as well as the minutes of the West German SPD party congresses after 1945. From 1967 to 1969 he worked for the Leipzig district cinema, and from 1969 in the association of film and television professionals of the GDR in Berlin. In 1972 he moved to the Federal Secretariat of the Kulturbund of the GDR , where he worked in the economics and monument preservation departments until 1982.

Because of critical statements on dealing with the history of the GDR in the cultural-political weekly newspaper Sonntag (GDR predecessor newspaper of Freitag ) in 1975, his attempt to be recommended to the Central Institute for the History of Sciences failed in 1981. 1982 to 1986 he was a lecturer at the publishing house for construction. He published his first book there and, as a lecturer, produced a historical non-fiction book for all of Berlin for the Berlin anniversary in 1987: Mühlen und Müller in Berlin , with a Catholic author from East Berlin and a social democratic author from West Berlin.

In January 1987 he became a district writer and head of the local history cabinet ( Heimatmuseum ) in the Hellersdorf district of Berlin, which he was to set up. With the backing of open-minded SED officials , he began researching the former Kaulsdorf pastor and (West) Berlin honorary citizen Heinrich Grüber . During the fall of the Berlin Wall he became chairman of the newly created "Working Group East Berlin Local Museums and Local History Collections", which in 1991 joined forces with his West Berlin role model to form a joint working group. After the local elections in May 1990 , the district assembly included him in the renaming of streets and squares in Hellersdorf. He was a member of the SPD district leadership of Hellersdorf for two terms. In 1994, his regional historical dissertation on Heinrich Grüber in Berlin-Kaulsdorf was rejected by history professors from West Germany who had recently come to Humboldt University (discussion of the doctoral procedure in the appendix to his GDR ebook from the drawer ).

Then Winkler developed the book project Drawer Texts from the GDR with Torsten Hilse , co-founder of the SPD in Schwante , and the book Bridges over the Wall with Hans Joachim Rieseberg, previously a senior employee of the Technical University of Berlin . In addition to the sources on the GDR from the “Archives of Power”, sources from the GDR people should be made public. Above all in the books GDR from the drawer and Bridges over the Wall there is criticism not only of the GDR, but also of the way it has been dealt with so far. Winkler argues that after 1990 it was not the SED dictatorship but rather the strivings for freedom and unity among the people of the GDR that should have been the focus of GDR research. He also regrets that after the fall of the Wall, no oral history project was developed with the several hundred pre-Wall SPD members in East Berlin who were still alive at the time.

Publications (selection)

(all under the nickname Dieter Winkler)

  • (Participant): Where from, what for, where. Round table discussion on historical awareness. Content, meaning and application of a term. In: Sunday 27/1975.
  • (Ed.): Contributions to Berlin's building history and monument preservation. 1987, ISBN 3-345000-16-4 .
  • History work in the satellite city. Paths to the historical appropriation of the city in Berlin-Hellersdorf. In: City history as cultural work. Contributions to the historical practice in Berlin-East and Berlin-West. 1991, ISBN 3-877769-04-7 .
  • Heinrich Grüber - Protesting Christian. Berlin-Kaulsdorf (1934-1945). 1993, ISBN 3-89468-088-1 .
  • Only Pastor Grüber's children remained without fear. Otto Rechnitz - inventor, manufacturer, prisoner, letters from the third to the second home. Essays on former Jewish Kaulsdorfers. In: Jews in Lichtenberg with the former districts in Friedrichshain , Hellersdorf and Marzahn . Ed .: Kulturbund e. V. (Thea Koberstein, Norbert Stein). 1993, ISBN 3-89468-191-8 .
  • Heinrich Grüber and Kurt Grossmann - a chapter in German-Jewish rapprochement. In: Third way. Journal for a Solidarity World, No. 16. 1995, ISBN 3-929666-93-6 .
  • With Torsten Hilse (ed.): Drawer texts from the GDR. Four volumes: The questions and the freedom. 1999, ISBN 3-928918-65-6 ; Suppressed Truth. 2000, ISBN 3-928918-68-0 ; Sometimes I am scared. 2002, ISBN 3-928918-71-0 ; One hundred percent. 2008, ISBN 3-928918-76-1 .
  • The renaming of streets and squares in the Hellersdorf district of Berlin in the nineties. According to files, newspaper reports and my memories. Ed .: Heimatverein Marzahn-Hellersdorf e. V. 2008.
  • with Hans Joachim Rieseberg (ed.): Bridges over the wall. German-German contacts, initiatives and projects from below before 1989 in Berlin. 2011, ISBN 978-3-86863-080-0 .
  • GDR out of the drawer. An East German's records from over five decades. (E-book). 2014, ISBN 978-3-8442-9358-6 .
  • Wolfgang K. is no longer unfamiliar: Why a socialist textbook is not finished in the socialist GDR . 2019, ISBN 978-3-7502-0303-7 .

Further texts on Heinrich Grüber

  • Heinrich Grüber and the Kaulsdorfer. In: Heinrich Grüber and the consequences. Contributions to the symposium on June 25, 1991 in the Jesus Church in Berlin-Kaulsdorf. Edited by the district chronicle of Berlin-Hellersdorf, the Protestant parish Berlin-Kaulsdorf and the Heimatverein für Hellersdorf, Kaulsdorf, Mahlsdorf eV Berlin 1992.
  • Heinrich Grüber in Kaulsdorf - files and memories. In: Confessing Christian under two dictatorships. In Memoriam Heinrich Grüber 1891–1975. Contributions to the Heinrich Grüber Colloquium from November 17th to 18th in Berlin-Kaulsdorf. Hg: Against Forgetting - For Democracy e. V. Bonn 1996.
  • Heinrich Grüber and politics. In: The Gospel and the World of Tomorrow. Colloquium on the 30th anniversary of Heinrich Grüber's death in the Evangelical Jesus Church in Berlin-Kaulsdorf on November 13, 2005. Documentation. Ed .: Evangelical Church Community Kaulsdorf and Heimatverein Berlin-Marzahn-Hellersdorf.
  • Heinrich Grüber and the parish council of the evangelical parish Kaulsdorf. In: Marzahn-Hellersdorf reading book. History and stories from 10,000 years. Published by: District Museum Marzahn-Hellersdorf 2009.
  • Heinrich Grüber in the summer of 1961. In: Bridges over the Wall. German-German contacts, initiatives and projects from below before 1989 in Berlin. 2011, ISBN 978-3-86863-080-0 .

He also published on regional and local history of Berlin. A large number of reviews of him can also be found between 2001 and 2013 in the Political Education Forum in Munich.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Leipzig Casino-Lichtspiele - Kinowiki. Retrieved June 20, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Kaulsdorf bookstore. February 8, 2003, accessed June 20, 2019 .
  3. ^ Karl-Ludwig Poggemann: Street corner in Marzahn when it was renamed (1992). November 17, 2008, accessed June 20, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Change of times - change of signs? The renaming of streets and squares in Hellersdorf in the nineties - Marzahn-Hellersdorf discussion on history on November 12th. December 18, 2016, accessed June 20, 2019 .
  5. ^ Forum Political Education. Retrieved July 3, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Winkler, Rolf Dieter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Winkler, Dieter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German cultural worker, regional historian, author and editor
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig