Stephan Bickhardt

Stephan Bickhardt (born September 3, 1959 in Dresden ) is a German Evangelical - Lutheran pastor . Since 2019 he has headed the Evangelical Academy in Meissen . He was a representative of the civil rights movement in the GDR .

Life

Stephan Bickhardt grew up in a parsonage in Dresden-Niedersedlitz . He is the son of Peter Bickhardt , a representative of the ecclesiastical opposition movement in the GDR, and the theologian Charlotte Bickhardt, geb. Baake (1932-1996). Stephan Bickhardt had two younger siblings. From 1966 he went to school in Dresden. From 1976 he was involved in the Action atonement . In the same year Stephan Bickhardt joined the FDJ . Nevertheless, he was not admitted to high school because of his attitude critical of the regime. Stephan Bickhardt completed his training as a toolmaker in Dresden from 1977 to 1978 . Because of inadequate teaching content and working conditions, he organized an apprentice strike, which was also joined by skilled workers and foremen. After a report in the GDR television business magazine Prisma , the apprenticeship training was changed. In addition to his training, Stephan Bickhardt obtained a special Abitur. From 1979 he studied theology and religious education at the Catechetical College in Naumburg and from 1983 to 1986 at the Sprachenkonvikt Berlin . During his studies he often traveled to Dresden and took part in the youth work of the vineyard community . In 1980 Stephan Bickhardt was involved in the development of the initiative for the introduction of a civil social peace service (SoFD) , which was initiated by the pastor of the Dresden vineyard community, Christoph Wonneberger . Between 1983 and 1989 he and Ludwig Mehlhorn organized more than thirty literary readings by critical authors in their own, Mehlhorn's and later their shared private apartment.

After first contacts with opposition groups around Gerd Poppe and Wolfgang Templin , he was one of the organizers of the “Initiative for Non-Alignment in Europe” in 1985 and in 1986 co-founder of the working group “Rejection of Practice and Principle of Demarcation” , from which the citizens' movement Democracy Now arose. In addition, he played a key role in the production and distribution of samizdat literature in the form of “ radix sheets ”.

1986–1987 he was a student assistant in the office of the Protestant student communities in the GDR and until 1989 vicar in Fredersdorf near Berlin . In 1987 Stephan Bickhardt took part in the Olof Palme Peace March . In 1989 he was co-author of the "Appeal for New Action", in which the nomination of independent candidates and the control of the results in the local elections on May 7, 1989 was demanded.

In autumn 1989 Stephan Bickhardt co-founded the opposition party, Demokratie Jetzt , and in 1990 became its managing director. In 1991 Bickhardt completed the vicariate and became a pastor in Eberswalde . From 1995 to 2006 he was chaplain of the Protestant Student Community Leipzig and in 2006 pastor of the parish Großstädteln / Großdeuben . Since November 2007 he worked as a police chaplain and was responsible for the Leipzig area .

On October 3, 2014, he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon by Federal President Joachim Gauck for his work in the context of the Peaceful Revolution at the festivities for the Day of German Unity .

In 2015, Stephan Bickhardt was one of the first to sign an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in which her refugee policy is supported. In 2016 he turned against Pegida and Legida using the slogan of the peaceful revolution in the GDR “We are the people” . He reaffirmed this demand together with over 100 civil rights activists in the declaration on Chemnitz , which was published in the context of the riots in Chemnitz in 2018 .

In August 2019 he was appointed director of the Evangelical Academy in Meißen.

Together with his wife Kathrin Bickhardt-Schulz, he has four children and they live together in Markkleeberg near Leipzig .

Honors

• 2014 Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon

Publications

• Hans-Jochen Tschiche , Ludwig Mehlhorn , Edelbert Richter , Heine Falcko , Stephan Bickhardt, Karim Saab , Reiner Eppelmann , Christian Dietrich , Martin-Michael Passauer , Georg Meusel , Andreas Schaller , Peter Grimm , Wolfgang Templin , Monika Haeger , Kathrin Eigenfeld , Gerd Poppe , Michael Kleim : TRACES. On the history of the peace movement in the GDR . Ed .: Stephan Bickhardt. typewriter duplicated, Berlin 1988 ( stanford.edu ).
• Stephan Bickhardt (Ed.): Right flow like water. Christians in the GDR for rejection of practice and the principle of demarcation. A work book from the GDR . With a foreword by Kurt Scharf . Wichern, Berlin 1988, ISBN 978-3-88981-034-2 .
• The decade of group formation . In: East-West Discussion Forum . No. 8-9 . Düsseldorf October 1989, p. 17-18 ( archive.org ).

literature

• Short biography for:  Bickhardt, Stephan . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• His name stands for shallow size and self-loving rum size . Ethics-Philosophy-Literature Working Group of ESG Leipzig (Ed.), Leipzig 2007.

Web links

• Literature by and about Stephan Bickhardt in the catalog of the German National Library
• Timeline and materials on the Bickhardt family in the GDR. In: bildungsserver.berlin-brandenburg.de. Retrieved August 19, 2018 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stephan Bickhardt - short biography. (PDF; 158 kB) In: bildungsserver.berlin-brandenburg.de. Retrieved August 18, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Robert Żurek (Ed.): Poland - My way to freedom. How Poland inspired the GDR civil rights activists - 13 conversations . fiber Verlag, Osnabrück 2015, ISBN 978-83-7629-911-2 , p. 15-32 .
3. ↑ Almuth Berger , Karl-Heinz Bonnke , Hans-Jürgen Fischbeck , Reinhard Lampe , Stephan Bickhardt, Martin Böttger , Dorrit Fischer , Ludwig Mehlhorn , Anette von Bodecker , Erich Busse , Martin König : 1987-05 Rejection of practice and the principle of demarcation. In: de.scribd.com. May 1987. Retrieved August 19, 2018 . 
4. ↑ Peter Wensierski: And the Stasi didn't notice anything. June 17, 2019, accessed June 17, 2019 . 
5. ^ Stephan Bickhardt: One year citizen movement democracy now (September 1990). In: ddr89.de. Die Tageszeitung , No. 3206, September 10, 1990, accessed on August 19, 2018 . 
6. ↑ Announcement on the awarding of the medal on the Day of German Unity on the website of the German Federal President (October 1, 2014).
7. ^ Uwe Naumann: Federal Cross of Merit for Pastor Stephan Bickhardt. In: sonntag-sachsen.de. September 29, 2014, accessed August 18, 2018 . 
8. ^ The wording of the open letter to Merkel. In: dw.com. November 3, 2015, accessed August 18, 2018 . 
9. ↑ "We are the people" - a reputation and its spiritual abuse. The GDR civil rights activist and police chaplain Stephan Bickhardt on how to deal with the legendary slogan of the Peaceful Revolution . In: Leipziger Volkszeitung . November 8, 2016, p. 11 ( archive.org ).
10. ^ Civil rights activists publish "Declaration on Chemnitz". Retrieved July 9, 2019 . 
11. ↑ Press release: The Leipzig police chaplain Stephan Bickhardt becomes director of the Evangelical Academy in Meißen. The Evangelical Academies in Germany e. V., July 25, 2019, accessed October 9, 2019 .