Rudolf Tschäpe

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Rudolf Tschäpe (born July 9, 1943 in Reichenbach / OL ; † April 14, 2002 in Potsdam ) was a German astrophysicist and civil rights activist .

Life

Tschäpe studied physics and astronomy in Jena . As a graduate physicist, he then worked in the Sonneberg observatory , which was then in the restricted border area. In 1972 he moved to the Central Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam , because there he had access to a calculating machine. His research focused on magnetohydrodynamics and gravitational-magnetohydrodynamic instabilities of accretion disks . In 1987 he received his doctorate with a thesis on the calculation of the gravitational potential of non-spherical mass distributions . After the fall of the Wall, he dealt with quasars , the lithium problem and magnetic field cycles (similar to the sunspot activities of our sun) in stars, to which he compared old photo plate recordings.

Tschäpe was a staunch critic of the militarization in the GDR . Among other things, he tried with a group of peace activists to address conscientious objection to military service at the youth commission of the Christian peace conference, but to no avail. He refused to do arms service in the NVA and, as a so-called construction soldier, had to do alternative service for two years from 1969 onwards. Through his well-founded Christian social commitment, he came into contact with critics of the GDR government and in 1989 was one of the first signatories of the founding appeal of the New Forum , which he helped formulate at a secret meeting in Grünheide in September together with his colleague Reinhard Meinel . In November 1989 Tschäpe, Meinel, Ute Platzeck and Detlef Kaminski went public with their New Forum in the Erlöserkirche .

Although he was one of the driving forces behind the New Forum at the beginning, he renounced a political function. He did not stand alongside Reinhard Meinel as a candidate for the council of speakers that formed the Potsdam delegation at the official founding congress of the New Forum on January 27, 1990 . This ruled out a political career for Tschäpe that quite a few GDR civil rights activists embarked on after the fall of the Wall.

His social engagement later concentrated on the promotion of art - maintaining the criticism of totalitarian systems. Tschäpe was already interested in art as a student and in 1974 organized an exhibition with works by Wieland Förster in the dome with the large refractor on the Telegrafenberg . On Tschäpe's initiative, after the fall of the Wall, a support group Lindenstrasse 54 was founded. It acquired Wieland Förster's sculpture “The Sacrifice” so that she would remind of the past in Lindenhof in Potsdam today : in 1937 the so-called hereditary health court was located there , from 1943 it was it was the prison of the Potsdam People's Court , from 1952 until the fall of the Wall the Lindenhof was a Stasi prison.

The first memorial that was commissioned to commemorate the peaceful revolution in 1989 in the GDR was also based on Tschäpe's idea and initiative: the sculpture " Nike '89 ", also by Wieland Förster. Today it stands at the Glienicke Bridge .

In 1995 Tschäpe was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit. In 2000, he and others received the German National Prize as the first signatory of the call for founding "Awakening 89 - New Forum of September 10, 1989" . On April 14, 2008 , the sixth anniversary of Tschäpe's death, the roundabout in front of the Potsdam Church of the Redeemer was renamed Dr.-Rudolf-Tschäpe-Platz.

literature

  • Wilhelm Brüggenthies, Wolfgang R. Dick: Biographischer Index der Astronomie / Biographical Index of Astronomy . German, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-8171-1769-8 , ( Acta historica astronomiae 26), p. 443.
  • Hans Walde: Sketches and portraits from Potsdam . Volume 1. Publicon-Verlags-GmbH, Freiburg im Breisgau 1993, ISBN 3-929092-35-2 , p. 241.

Web links

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Individual evidence

  1. ^ Opening of the construction soldiers' congress on September 3rd, 2004 ( Memento of July 28th, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Place is named after Rudolf Tschäpe. In: Potsdamer Neue Presse. February 7, 2008, accessed November 18, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Tschäpe, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German astrophysicist and civil rights activist of the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Reichenbach / OL
DATE OF DEATH April 14, 2002
Place of death Potsdam