Steffen Gresch

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Steffen Gresch 2017

Steffen Michael Gresch (born August 2, 1965 in Quedlinburg ) is a German speaker, actor and author. In the 1980s he belonged to the opposition in the GDR , was a representative of the civil rights movement and co-founder of the human rights working group in Leipzig.

Life

Artistic and politically subversive engagement in the GDR until 1987

During an apprenticeship as a locksmith at Leuna-Werke, Gresch acquired early stage experience and basic acting skills in an agit-prop theater group as part of the FDJ in 1982/83 . Due to increasing ideological differences, however, they soon separated. After completing his apprenticeship, he began working as a nurse at the University Clinic in Leipzig.

The contacts with East Berlin opposition circles motivated Gresch to come up with political songs on the guitar that were intended to question the totalitarian SED regime. These were presented by him at church events, including in the Weinbergskirche in Dresden, but often only at private subcultural gatherings. On November 24, 1985, as a non-Berliner, Gresch was able to take part in the founding of the Berlin Initiative Peace and Human Rights in Wolfgang Templin's apartment in Berlin-Pankow. In 1986 Gresch also dared to spread the East Berlin samizdat magazine Grenzfall in Leipzig.

During this time he earned his living as a nude and portrait model at the Leipzig University of Graphics and Book Art (HGB). After he became aware of his application to leave the Federal Republic of Germany, he received a “model ban”. As the current rector of the HGB, the painter Arno Rink , assured him, it was a one-time political intervention by the Ministry of the Interior, a specific professional ban in view of an actually insignificant fee-based activity. From January to June 1987 Gresch found a job in the caretaker area of ​​the administration of the Theological Seminary in Leipzig .

Founding of the human rights working group in Leipzig in 1986

Inspired by the establishment of the Peace and Human Rights Initiative in East Berlin last year , Gresch conducted exploratory talks with friends around the Theological Seminary in Leipzig , where he learned that the former pastor of the Dresden Weinberg Church, Christoph Wonneberger , was now working in Leipzig. Gresch prepared a reading in his apartment with the regime critic Peter Grimm , to which Christoph Wonneberger was invited.

In December 2013, Steffen Gresch remembers:

“I organized a reading at my home in Leipzig's Schletterstrasse 12 / backyard in a hopelessly overcrowded living room in September 1986. My companion Peter Grimm from the Peace and Human Rights Initiative successfully presented a selection of his texts. Then Peter and I presented the (now legendary) opposition newspaper Grenzfall . That was the start of a fruitful cooperation with Christoph Wonneberger, Beate Schade, Andrea Stefan, Oliver Kloss and other Leipzigers. - From now on we worked together to set up a working group on general human rights that would bring the issue of the right to freedom of expression of opinion to the public just as effectively as perhaps one day even the right to freedom of movement. The scope of the possibilities at that time was narrow. State repression was always to be expected if the effects were to go beyond the narrow circle of trusted friends.
Now we arranged regular meetings, whereby our main aim was to find a convenient time and a suitable location for this, but also to structure the perfect course of the planned event. In doing so, Christoph Wonneberger's insider knowledge proved to be indispensable for our work, his wise deliberation, since in addition to the state security there were also internal church opponents lurking ...
On May 24, 1987 the time had come. In the well-filled cellar of the Michaeliskirche in Leipzig, our human rights working group presented itself to the public for the first time with the performance: 'I am so free !!! - The human right freedom of expression in conversation ' . - A radical event for the time, the success of which surprised the participants themselves. The group now grew many times over in terms of members ... "

- Steffen Gresch

Relocation to West Berlin

After an unsuccessful recruitment attempt on the part of the Ministry for State Security, Gresch was urged to leave the GDR quickly. On June 12, 1987 he was able to move to West Berlin, where he held a public vigil lasting several days at the allied inner-city border checkpoint Checkpoint Charlie in January 1988, which led to the release of the imprisoned opposition members Bärbel Bohley , Freya Klier , Stephan Krawczyk , Wolfgang Templin and Ralf Hirsch on the occasion of the East Berlin Liebknecht-Luxemburg demonstration .

Artistic career since the unification of Germany

Steffen Gresch played the main role of Kaspar Hauser in Das Tagebuch des Caspar Hauser (written and directed by Jürgen Wönne) - a commissioned work for the Kaspar Hauser Days in Ansbach in 1992 (premiere on November 28, 1992 in Ansbach). Deutsche Welle TV accompanied the Kaspar Hauser Days and the premiere with a short film production in which Gresch also appeared as Kaspar Hauser.

In the 1995 summer theater season of the Cristallerie Wadgassen (Villeroy & Boch) he was Don Francisco in LM Cossa's award-winning comedy La Nona - Grandma Eats! (Director: Gerald Uhlig ) with. His play Faust premiered in the Saarbrücken Studio Theater in 1999. Gresch rewrote Ivan Turgenev's eponymous novella to a 75-minute play, directed it himself and played all the roles. "A successful attempt to combine literature and theater," said the sidewalk. German cabaret magazine . In cooperation with the Saarbrücken tenor, pianist and music professor Charles Robin Broad , he took part in Mozart and Beethoven revues as an author, narrator, actor and singer. He played in Mozart without balls, but with liqueur, please! (2006) the allegedly poisoned by Antonio Salieri Mozart. Everything you always wanted to know about Beethoven but never dared to ask (2007/2008, 2011) was commented on by the Saarbrücker Zeitung as “A revue with an educational mission” . Gresch appeared as a speaker in Jürgen Wönne's theater collage Strindberg und die Frauen . Staged readings of classics and modern classics such as Goethe, Heine, Kleist, Morgenstern and Kafka and numerous literary fairy tale evenings.

From 1995 to 2011, Gresch moderated Earth Day in Saarland (Environment Day, which is celebrated on April 22nd worldwide). Together with the Saarbrücken cultural patron and environmental activist Horst Ferdinand Lühmann , he brought out the Saarland regional anthology "Gut im Bild" (Resonanz Verlag Saarbrücken) in 2004 as chief editor . He wrote two plays and now lives in Karlsruhe.

As a contemporary witness, Steffen Gresch is actively involved in the contemporary witness portal “20 Years of Peaceful Revolution and German Unity” run by the Federal Foundation for Coming to terms with the SED dictatorship .

Plays:

  • Al Capone meets Lolita . Crime comedy (original reading, Saarbrücken, 2003).
  • The sea swallows us heroes too. German-German tragic comedy (original reading, Saarbrücken, 2008).

literature

  • Thomas Rudolph , Oliver Kloss , Rainer Müller , Christoph Wonneberger (ed. On behalf of the IFM-Archivs eV): Way in the uprising. Chronicle of opposition and resistance in the GDR from August 1987 to December 1989. Vol. 1, Leipzig, Araki Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-941848-17-7 , ( preface as a reading sample for download) especially Part III, P. 321 ff.
  • Frank Richter: We are so free. The “Human Rights Working Group” , in: Pausch, Andreas Peter: Resistance - Pastor Christoph Wonneberger , Berlin, Metropol, 2014, ISBN 978-3-86331-184-1 , pp. 189–195.
  • Hagen Findeis / Detlef Pollack / Manuel Schilling: The disenchantment of the political. What happened to the politically alternative groups in the GDR? Interviews with former leading representatives , Leipzig, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1994, pp. 194–198.

Web links

Commons : Steffen Gresch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Rudolph later remarked splendidly on this foundation : “The initiative has taken to overthrow the SED, even if it did not say so at the beginning.” - Interview with Thomas Rudolph in: Hagen Findeis / Detlef Pollack / Manuel Schilling: Die Disenchantment of the political. What happened to the politically alternative groups in the GDR? Interviews with former leading representatives, Leipzig, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1994, p. 195.
  2. ↑ Reprint: Ralf Hirsch / Lew Kopelew (eds.): Initiative for Peace and Human Rights: GRENZFALL. Complete reprint of all editions published in the GDR (1986/87). First independent periodical , foreword by Lew Kopelew, Berlin (West), self-published, 1988, 2nd edition 1989.
  3. ↑ Werner Vogler (ed.) In connection with Hans Seidel and Ulrich Kühn : Four decades of ecclesiastical and theological training in Leipzig. The Theological Seminar / The Church University of Leipzig , Leipzig, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1993, ISBN 3-374-01445-3 , p. 147.
  4. ^ Announcement in borderline cases , see reprint by Ralf Hirsch / Lew Kopelew (eds.): GRENZFALL . Berlin (West), 2nd edition 1989, p. 62.
  5. ^ Steffen Gresch: Memories of the time 1986/87 in Leipzig. When I decided to leave the "GDR" and, as long as I had to stay, started an opposition group with like-minded people , December 2013.
  6. ↑ Ibid, page 2.
personal data
SURNAME Gresch, Steffen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gresch, Steffen Michael (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German speaker, actor, author and GDR civil rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH August 2, 1965
PLACE OF BIRTH Quedlinburg