Tamara Bunke

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Tamara Bunke 1964

Haydée Tamara Bunke Bíder (born November 19, 1937 in Buenos Aires , Argentina , † August 31, 1967 in Vado del Yeso , Bolivia ), also known by her battle name Tania , was a German-Argentine advocate of revolutionary socialism , who through her participation on the Bolivian guerrilla warfare under the command of Che Guevara .

Childhood and youth

Tamara Bunke was born in Argentina as the daughter of German exiles . Her father, the sports teacher Erich Bunke (born September 30, 1902, died June 30, 1994), and her mother Nadja Bider , who was born in a Jewish family in Odessa and who worked as a teacher, met in Berlin and were convinced Communists and members of a resistance group fled to Argentina from the National Socialists in 1935 . The parents joined the Argentine Communist Party in 1936 and became the co-founders of the group “Das Andre Deutschland”. In 1937 the father became a board member of the social democratic group Vorwärts. The mathematician Olaf Bunke , who was still born in Germany, is Tamara's brother. The Bunke family returned to the GDR in 1952 and lived in Stalinstadt , where Erich Bunke again worked as a teacher. As a teenager, Tamara Bunke took part in regular shooting training in the Society for Sport and Technology . On her 18th birthday, she applied for membership in the SED and at the same time applied for release from German citizenship and emigration to Argentina on the grounds that she wanted to fight for the working class there. In 1956 she passed her high school diploma at the “ Clara Zetkin ” extended high school . Tamara Bunke then worked full-time in the Free German Youth as a pioneer leader at a Berlin school before she was matriculated at the Romance Studies Institute of the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1958 .

At the university, together with fellow Latin American students, she founded a student group named after Ernst Thälmann for mutual political and cultural exchange on the GDR and Latin America. She became a full member of the SED, but was initially refused to leave the country. Bunke often interrupted her studies when her language skills helped her to do interpreting. Since 1960, Bunke has been listed under the number 430/60 as a prospective agent for the Enlightenment Headquarters (HV A) of the Ministry for State Security , the GDR's foreign secret service. The Lieutenant Colonel Günter Männel, who is responsible for South America in the HV A, spoke to her about the fact that she should report for the MfS after she had requested to leave for Argentina. According to an MfS report from 1962, it was planned for a deployment first in Argentina and later in the USA.

According to Männel's later statements, he had explicitly set Bunke on Ernesto "Che" Guevara . The international ambitions of the revolutionary, which he pursued independently of the foreign policy priorities of other socialist states, made detailed information about him particularly interesting - especially for the KGB, with which the GDR services worked closely. However, there is no evidence in the files known today that bunkes were actually working for the HV A or the KGB. In December 1960, Guevara came to visit the GDR at the head of a business delegation. Tamara Bunke was used as his interpreter in Leipzig. She was fascinated by her compatriot, who was internationally revered as a hero, and the Cuban Revolution , which had been successful almost two years earlier , which intensified her longing for Latin America.

Bunke's departure was approved on December 12, 1960 by the Central Committee of the SED . In the same month she again interpreted for official guests from Cuba: Fernando and Alicia Alonso , the directors of the Cuban National Ballet , which was on tour in Europe. Bunke told the Cubans about their enthusiasm for their country and their great desire to visit it. According to a report by the MfS, Bunke also had a relationship with a secretary at the Cuban embassy in Prague. As a result, she received an official invitation from the Cuban State Institute for Friendship of Nations (ICAP) and in May 1961 she was given a short-term seat on the plane with which the delegation of the National Ballet traveled from Prague back to Cuba. The space became vacant after a dancer used the European trip to escape. Up until the day of her departure from Berlin-Schönefeld to Prague for her onward journey to Havana, Bunke had not informed her family that she had already been granted the requested release from German citizenship several weeks earlier and that she was invited to Cuba. A few weeks before Bunkes left the GDR, MfS Lieutenant Colonel MENNEL defected to the West and discovered numerous agents working in the West. This apparently ended Tamara Bunke's contact with the MfS.

Time in Cuba

Tamara Bunke, 1961

Tamara Bunke first studied journalism in Cuba and worked as a translator and interpreter for various authorities, including the Ministry of Education, the FMC women's association and the ICAP. She joined the revolutionary people's militia established by the government in 1962 and has since preferred to wear uniform. Later she was selected by Ernesto Guevara as a suitable supporter of his planned export of the socialist revolution to the South American continent and from May 1963 received military and secret service training from the Cuban secret service DGI . She chose the battle name "Tania" in memory of a Soviet partisan. With one of her Cuban instructors, Ulises Estrada, who later wrote the book Tania. With Che Guevara wrote about her in the Bolivian underground , she had a love affair from 1963 to 1964. Another instructor was Dariel Alarcón Ramírez, known by his battle name "Benigno", who had already fought alongside Guevara in the Cuban Revolutionary War and in the Congo and was one of only five survivors of the Bolivia guerrilla. After completing her training, Tamara Bunke traveled through Europe under various false identities, including to West Berlin, to build up the legends she needed to work as an agent .

Underground struggle in Bolivia

After her trip to Europe, which included several months of secret service training in Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1964, Bunke was sent to Bolivia as an agent by the Cuban secret service in October 1964 under the name "Laura Gutiérrez Bauer" . In La Paz , she was supposed to seek contacts with the local upper class, which was initially quite successful. They were said to be interested in the folk culture of the Andes ethnomusicologist from his credit, including private lessons in German . In this way she gained access to the environment of President René Barrientos Ortuño , whom she soon got to know personally. She married a Bolivian in order to acquire Bolivian citizenship, but soon separated from him. After all, she worked as the personal secretary of the press secretary of the presidential palace and in this position she had the best opportunities to covertly support the revolutionary fighters. From November 1966 Guevara was also in Bolivia to prepare for the guerrilla war . Disguised as the presenter of a radio program for women, Bunke sent the fighters in the mountains encrypted messages over the radio. For the poorly supplied troops, which found little support from the local population, they were the main contact with the outside world. At the turn of the year Bunke went to the guerrilla fighters around Guevara on the Río Ñancahuazú for the first time and received there, among other instructions, the order to travel to Argentina to organize combat aid for the local revolutionary urban guerrilla. She traveled back to her old home for the first time, but her efforts to provide effective support did not achieve the hoped-for success. Disregarding the express order to stay away from the guerrillas, she waited for two weeks at Guevara's base in the mountains in March 1967 for the comandante after she had brought supporters Régis Debray and Ciro Bustos there from abroad . In the meantime, the Bolivian military found her parked off-road vehicle with her notebook containing a lot of classified information, so that her cover was exposed. On March 27, Guevara commented in his war diary that with her exposure "two years of good and patient work had been lost" and that the planned departure of his visitors from the combat zone had now become very difficult.

Thereupon Bunke joined the fighting force - against the will of Guevara. She was the only woman among a total of around 60 guerrilla fighters, about half of whom were Bolivians and 18 Cubans. In April 1967, she was left behind with a rearguard led by Juan Vitalio Acuña due to illness . In the same month, due to a radio failure, contact with the main group around Guevara was lost. In search of the separated main group, the rearguard wandered around the eastern slopes of the Andes without being able to establish contact. On August 31, 1967, Bunke died in an enemy ambush while crossing the Río Grande near Vado del Yeso (German: "Chalk ford") and Puerto Mauricio in the area of ​​the Río Ñancahuazú. The group leader Acuña and six other fighters fell with her. Bunke's body was found downstream on the bank seven days later and was then given an honorable burial in the provincial capital of Vallegrande in the presence of President René Barrientos Ortuño .

In her rucksack she found a letter he had already started: “I don't know what will become of me. Probably nothing. I try to remember what it's like to have courage. I am nothing. I'm not even a woman, not a girl, just a child. "

aftermath

Tamara Bunke, 1961–1967. Three different identities that she assumed for the Cuban secret service

In September 1998, a team of Cuban forensic experts sent to Bolivia to search for traces of Guevara's guerrilla troops identified the remains of Tamara Bunke in Vallegrande, together with those of other combatants. With the consent of her family, they were then transferred to Cuba and solemnly buried in December 1998 at the memorial for Guevara and his guerrillas in Santa Clara . Her now empty grave in Vallegrande is a central point of attraction for politically motivated tourists on the trail of the revolutionary fighters around Guevara.

Tamara Bunke was revered as a socialist heroine after her death: In the GDR, over 200 schools, youth brigades, kindergartens and a youth club in Berlin bore her name, which they changed after the fall of the Wall , partly because they were dissolved. Numerous public institutions in Cuba are still named after her. In the Mecklenburg town of Dabel there has been a memorial stone since 1984. The DFD group has had its name here since 1977 . The public presentation of her biography and the political evaluation of her participation in the armed revolutionary struggle, which contradicted the foreign policy line of the GDR, was subject to state control. The documentary filmmaker Konrad Wolf made two attempts to film the life of Bunkes, but failed because of the resistance of the SED leadership.

Nadja Bunke, the mother, lived in Berlin-Friedrichshain until her death in 2003 . After Tamara's death, she quit her job in order to devote herself entirely to upholding the memory of her daughter and tried to combat all allegations about her daughter that were disliked and defamatory, especially through legal channels. In 1973, Nadja Bunke tried unsuccessfully to prevent the publication of the biography Der Weg zum Rio Grande by the GDR author Eberhard Panitz . In 1997 she managed to get the Aufbau-Verlag to write the biography Tania , written by the Uruguayan José A. Friedl Zapata . The woman who loved Che Guevara took from the market to whom she had proven numerous errors and unsubstantiated claims. In 2001, she brought the Fidel Castro biographer Volker Skierka to renounce his allegation, which was about to be published, that Tamara Bunke and Ernesto Guevara had a love affair.

Tamara Bunke's estate is being viewed and documented by students studying museum studies at the Berlin University of Applied Sciences (HTW) under the direction of Oliver Rump. A part of the estate was handed over by Cuba Sí in 2014 to the Cuban Institute for Friendship of Peoples.

Inspired by Tamara Bunke, the American Patty Hearst also used the battle name Tania during her active time in the radical left-wing terrorist group Symbionese Liberation Army in the mid-1970s.

The asteroid of the inner main belt (2283) discovered on September 26, 1974 Bunke was named after her.

literature

Movies

  • The three faces of Tamara Bunke . TV film, director: Helmuth Ashley , screenplay: Hellmut Andics , production: ZDF , with Tamara Bunke: Andrea Jonasson , Germany, 1971, first broadcast: ZDF, October 8, 1971, 90 min.
  • Tania La Guerrillera. Documentary, director: Heidi Specogna , 1991, 90 min.
  • Red Carnation Time. Documentary about Tamara's mother Nadja Bunke, director: Heidi Specogna, Germany, 2004, 98 min.
  • Tanja La G. Experimental and documentary video, director: Tania Lescano, Cuba, Germany, 2008, 65 min.,
  • Che - guerrilla . Feature film by Steven Soderbergh , Spain, France, USA, 2008. Cinematographic implementation of Che Guevara's guerrilla fight in Bolivia. Franka Potente plays the role of Tamara Bunke aka "Tania"
  • Mission Che Guevara - The German who became his destiny. Documentary, director: Dietrich Duppel, Germany, 2017, 45 min.

Web links

Commons : Tamara Bunke  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Jacobs: Revolutionary Kisses. In: Berliner Zeitung of January 16, 1998, accessed October 17, 2013.
  2. ^ Gottfried Hamacher with the assistance of André Lohmar, Herbert Mayer, Günter Wehner and Harald Wittstock: Against Hitler. Germans in the Resistance, in the armed forces of the anti-Hitler coalition and the "Free Germany" movement. (Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Manuscripts 53) Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin, ISBN 3-320-02941-X , online text here
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Erwin Starke: Love in times of revolution. In: Potsdam Latest News of November 17, 2011, accessed on October 17, 2013.
  4. ↑ Horst Jäkel: With Tamara Bunke and Rudolf Bahro. In: Spurensicherung.de o. D., accessed on October 18, 2013.
  5. ↑ a b c Birgit Helms: "Tania la Guerillera" - agent and guerrilla fighter In: Stern.de o. D., accessed on October 16, 2013.
  6. ↑ Heinz Pocher: On the 40th anniversary of the death of the guerrillas Tamara Bunke: Fallen for Latin America's freedom (PDF; 1.2 MB). In: Rotfuchs vom August 2007, p. 17, accessed on October 18, 2013.
  7. ↑ a b Thomas Klug: November 19, 1937 - Tamara Bunke's birthday. (mp3) In: ZeitZeichen . WDR , November 19, 2012, accessed October 16, 2013 .
  8. ^ A b c Katrin Neubauer: Tania - Guerrillera from Eisenhüttenstadt. In: Latin America News , May 1998, accessed July 3, 2015.
  9. ↑ a b The Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR (ed.): Head Office A (HV A). Tasks - structures - sources. ( Memento from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (MfS-Handbuch), Berlin 2013, p. 77.
  10. ↑ a b c Cordt Schnibben: Revolutionaries: Three lives in one skin. In: Der Spiegel of September 23, 1996, accessed October 17, 2013.
  11. ^ Araceli Viceconte: Tania, o el mito de la buena miliciana. ( Memento of October 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) In: Clarín of October 25, 1995, accessed on October 16, 2013 (Spanish).
  12. ↑ a b Almut Nitzsche: Tamara Bunke. Biographical article on FemBio from March 2007, accessed October 16, 2013.
  13. ↑ Koenen: Dream Paths of the World Revolution. P. 329 ff.
  14. ↑ a b c Christine Toomey: Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider: the woman who died with Che Guevara. (PDF; 901 kB) In: The Sunday Times of August 10, 2008 (English).
  15. ↑ Iraida Aguirrechu (ed.): El Diario del Che en Bolivia. 4th edition. Editora Política, Havanna 2008, p. 53.
  16. ↑ "Tania la Guerillera". In: Record date on WDR.de , August 31, 2007, accessed on October 16, 2013.
  17. ↑ El Diario del Che en Bolivia. P. 139.
  18. ^ Members of Che's Guerrilla Movement in Bolivia. Overview on LatinAmericanStudies.org n.d. , accessed on October 17, 2013 (English).
  19. ↑ Erick Ortega: Relatos inéditos de prisioneros de la guerrilla del Che. In: La Razón, June 17, 2013, accessed October 17, 2013 (Spanish).
  20. ↑ El Diario del Che en Bolivia. P. 341.
  21. ↑ a b Hinnerk Berlekamp: The adventurer does not accept it. In: Berliner Zeitung of December 24, 1998, accessed on November 28, 2013.
  22. ↑ Vallegrande es un santuario para los seguidores de la causa guevarista. In: La Razón, June 17, 2013, accessed November 28, 2013 (Spanish).
  23. ↑ Honor for Tania in Santa Clara ( Memento from October 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 248 kB). In: Granma from January 2008, accessed from Cubafreundschaft.de on November 28, 2013.
  24. ↑ Organizations, state and social institutions support cultural life. On the website Dabel.eu o. D., accessed on November 28, 2013.
  25. ↑ a b Alexander Osang: Revolutionaries: The last guerrillera. In: Spiegel Online of March 12, 2002, accessed on November 28, 2013.
  26. ↑ Sabine Deckwerth: Tamara Bunke fought with Che, but not for the KGB. In: Berliner Zeitung of April 10, 2002, accessed on November 28, 2013.
  27. ↑ Tamara Bunke: internationalist from the GDR
  28. ↑ Patricia Hearst. In: Encyclopaedia Britannica , accessed November 28, 2013.
  29. ^ Lutz D. Schmadel : Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . Fifth Revised and Enlarged Edition. Ed .: Lutz D. Schmadel. 5th edition. Springer Verlag , Berlin , Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 978-3-540-29925-7 , pp.  186 (English, 992 pp., Link.springer.com [ONLINE; accessed on November 4, 2017] Original title: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . First edition: Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg 1992): “Named in memory of the German patriot Tamara Bunke (1937–1967) ”
personal data
SURNAME Bunke, Tamara
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bunke Bider, Haydée Tamara (real name); Tania la guerrillera
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Argentine-German guerrillas in Latin America, alongside Che Guevara
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Buenos Aires , Argentina
DATE OF DEATH August 31, 1967
Place of death Puerto Mauricio near Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia