Stephan Krawczyk

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Stephan Krawczyk 1989 (standing behind Friedrich Schorlemmer ). Left Wolf Biermann , right Jürgen Fuchs

Stephan Krawczyk (born December 31, 1955 in Weida ) is a German songwriter and writer and a former GDR dissident .

Life

After graduating from high school and completing his military service, Krawczyk became a member of the SED in 1976 . In 1978 he began a distance learning course in concert guitar in Weimar . From 1978 to 1983, Krawczyk was a member of the folk group Liedehrlich . He was honored for “outstanding artistic achievements” and in 1981 received the main prize in the GDR chanson competition . The GDR record label Amiga published a record by Liedehrlich , which, under the conditions in the GDR, was equivalent to being recognized as a "state artist". But Krawczyk chose a different route. After moving to Berlin in 1984, he became friends with the director Freya Klier . He resigned from the SED in 1985, an act that the SED converted into a party expulsion. Because of his critical texts, his license as a professional musician was withdrawn, which amounted to a professional ban . Krawczyk was only able to work under the protection of the church ; B. in the Samariterkirche in Berlin-Friedrichshain. With this and with his songs he became one of the most important figures in the GDR opposition at the end of the 1980s. He was monitored and harassed by the State Security for years . In November 1987, in a letter to SED Politburo member Kurt Hager , Krawczyk and Freya Klier demanded respect for human rights, the withdrawal of their professional bans and independence from art and culture in the GDR. On November 8th, according to his own statement, the State Security tried to murder him and Klier with a neurotoxin applied to the door handle of the car. He was arrested on January 17, 1988 . At the SED's official Luxemburg-Liebknecht demonstration , he wanted to draw attention to his professional ban with a banner. The affair surrounding his imprisonment attracted a great deal of attention across Germany. The western media reported extensively. During this time, Krawczyk himself was completely isolated in the Stasi prison in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen . In order to avoid expatriation, as in the case of Biermann in 1976, the GDR State Security pulled out all the stops to force Krawczyk into agreeing to a “voluntary” departure from the GDR. In the SED “Central Organ” Neues Deutschland he was placed under “intelligence connections” and the proceedings against him were expanded to include “treasonous relationships”. His lawyer Wolfgang Schnur , who at the time was regarded as a lawyer of trust for the Evangelical Church in the GDR, but worked for the SED regime for almost 25 years as a Stasi spy under the code name IM "Torsten" on behalf of the Stasi, did the rest. He urged Krawczyk to agree to leave. The alternative would have been twelve years in prison. Schnur was one of 80 Stasi informers who temporarily shadowed Krawczyk and Klier. On February 2, 1988, Krawczyk and his wife Freya Klier, with whom he was married from 1986 to 1992, were deported to the Federal Republic .

In 1994, Krawczyk and Bettina Wegner supported the federal election campaign of the non-party PDS candidate Stefan Heym in the Berlin-Mitte / Prenzlauer Berg constituency. Since the 1990s he has published several books that deal in particular with the attitude towards life of the generations socialized in the GDR and are strongly autobiographical, including Das earthische Kind . In addition, he was still active as a musician, released the CD album Die Queen ist in der Stadt as Stephan Krawczyk and a band .

In 2002, Krawczyk gave a concert for the first time at the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial . At the turn of 2007/08 he was on a tour through East Germany with Freya Klier.

As part of the awarding of the Federal Cross of Merit to twelve GDR civil rights activists in Bellevue Palace in 2009, which Krawczyk accompanied musically, then Federal President Horst Köhler asked him to sing the national anthem, whereupon Krawczyk began to sing the first verse of the Deutschlandlied . At Freya Klier's intervention, Krawczyk interrupted his performance, sang the third verse and then apologized for this “unintentional slip”.

Stephan Krawczyk has lived as a freelance writer, composer and singer in Berlin-Neukölln since the 1990s .

Works

LPs and CDs as a solo artist

  • 1987: Stand again
  • 1989: How are you
  • 1990: Beautiful sore world
  • 1993: Terror Moon
  • 1995: Milonga
  • 2000: The Queen is in town
  • 2002: Contrast program (Live in Bremen-Vegesack )
  • 2004: Today the swallow flies high
  • 2009: Dear songs
  • 2009: One All
  • 2012: Connected to the earth, married by air (Stephan Krawczyk and Martin Luther)

Opera and theater

Prose and poetry

  • Stand again . Song lyrics. Knaur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-426-02050-5
  • Beautiful sore world . Prose, poetry. Self-published, Berlin 1990
  • The earthly child . Stories. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-353-01062-9
  • Soon . Novel. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-353-01138-2
  • Beware of stones . Considerations. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-353-01175-7
  • Feurio . Considerations. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-353-01195-1
  • The fool . Novel. Pendo Verlag, Zurich 2003, ISBN 3-85842-547-8
  • The turning festival . Satires. Illustrations: Rainer Hofmann-Battiston. Kunsthaus Verlag, Boddin 2005, ISBN 3-933274-53-2
  • The sky fell from all clouds . A German-German journey through time. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig, 2009, ISBN 978-3-374-02709-5

Awards

Documentaries about Stephan Krawczyk

  • Rebellion behind the wall - fight for freedom of expression . ARD / 2005. Script and direction: Torsten Sasse .

literature

Web links

Commons : Stephan Krawczyk  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Silvia Müller:  Krawczyk, Stephan . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  2. ↑ badische-zeitung.de
  3. ↑ ngz-online.de
  4. ↑ Banner "Against professional bans in the GDR" on jugendopposition.de ( Federal Agency for Civic Education / Robert Havemann Society )
  5. ^ Luxemburg-Liebknecht-Demonstration documents, interviews with contemporary witnesses and photos on jugendopposition.de
  6. ^ ADN report in Neues Deutschland on jugendopposition.de
  7. ↑ In the resistance . (PDF; 31.1 MB)
  8. ↑ Stefan Krawczyk "For Heym" . In: Berliner Zeitung , June 24, 1994
  9. ↑ Krawczyk apologizes for "Germany, Germany above everything" . In: Der Tagesspiegel , November 17, 2009
personal data
SURNAME Krawczyk, Stephan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German songwriter and writer, GDR dissident
DATE OF BIRTH December 31, 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Weida