Thomas Auerbach

Thomas Auerbach (born July 26, 1947 in Leipzig , † June 4, 2020 in Berlin ) was a German civil rights activist and politically persecuted in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). He worked as an author of non-fiction to come to terms with the SED dictatorship and from 1993 to 2009 he was a senior employee of the Federal Commissioner for Stasi Records (BStU).

Life

After graduating from the polytechnic high school , Thomas Auerbach began an apprenticeship as an electrician in 1964 and was involved in church youth work. In 1965 the Ministry for State Security (MfS) of the GDR tried to recruit him as an unofficial employee . Auerbach refused and reported to church circles about the offer. In the same year Auerbach refused to do military service in the National People's Army , although there was no right to conscientious objection in the GDR . From 1967 to 1970 Auerbach completed an apprenticeship as a deacon at the Protestant church and in 1971 became city youth warden for the community in Jena . From 1975 until his exclusion in 1976 Auerbach was a member of the GDR CDU block party .

In November 1976 Auerbach and others called for protests against Wolf Biermann's expatriation and organized collections of signatures. Auerbach was arrested in 1976 on charges of “ subversive agitation ” and “subversive group formation”. In September 1977, after ten months of pre-trial detention, he was deported to West Berlin against his will and expatriated .

In West Berlin , he first worked as a religion teacher and in church youth work and later as a consultant for political adult education at the All-German Institute . Auerbach imitated the Abitur and began studying educational sciences at the Free University of Berlin . With Jürgen Fuchs , Roland Jahn and others he supported opposition groups in the GDR. Auerbach was also active in the peace movement and with the Greens in Berlin.

After the opening of the inner-German border and during the reunification and peaceful revolution in the GDR , Auerbach took part in the occupation of the MfS district administration in Gera in December 1989 and was involved in coming to terms with the SED dictatorship. In 1993 Auerbach became a research associate in the Education and Research Department at the Federal Commissioner for Stasi Records (BStU). From 2005 to 2008 he headed the branch office of the BStU in Schwerin . In 1997 Auerbach joined the CDU . In 2009 he retired. He lived in Wendland and has been back in Berlin since 2012.

Honors

• Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2000)

Works

• Preparations for day X. The planned isolation camps of the MfS . Berlin 1995.
• Task forces on the invisible front. Terror and sabotage preparations by the Stasi against the Federal Republic of Germany , Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-86153-183-6 . ( Review on: www.bstu.bund.de , website of the BStU, Berlin 2015.)
• With Ehrhart Neubert : "It can be different". Opposition and resistance in Thuringia 1945–1989. (Volume 3, 2005.)
• With Matthias Braun, Bernd Eisenfeld , Gesine von Prittwitz, Clemens Vollnhals : Anatomy of State Security: History, Structure and Methods - Department XX: State apparatus, bloc parties, churches, culture, “political underground”. , published by the BStU, Department of Education and Research, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-942130-13-4 .
• Liquidation = murder? On the ambiguous semantics of the term in the MfS documents (PDF; 569 kB) In: Horch und Guck , Zeitschrift des BStU, issue 1/2008, pp. 4-7.

literature

• Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk :  Thomas Auerbach . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Anne Stiebritz: Discussions on Open Work. Uwe Koch - Walter Schilling - Arnd Morgenroth - Wolfgang Thalmann - Thomas Auerbach Jena 2010, ISBN 978-3-941854-03-1 (softcover) and ISBN 978-3-941854-04-8 (hardcover)
• Hans-Joachim Veen (Ed.): Lexicon. Opposition and Resistance in the SED Dictatorship . Propylaeen Verlag, Berlin, Munich 2000.
• lko-Sascha Kowalczuk, Tom Sello (ed.): For a free country with free people. Opposition u. Resistance in biographies a. Photos . Berlin 2006.
• U. Scheer: Vision and Reality. The opposition in Jena in the seventies and eighties . Berlin 1999.
• Siegfried Reiprich : The dialogue that was prevented. My political de-registration . 2nd Edition. Berlin 2001.
• H. Pietzsch: Youth between Church a. Country. History of church youth work in Jena 1970-89 . Cologne et al. 2005.

Web links

• Literature by and about Thomas Auerbach in the catalog of the German National Library
• Thomas Auerbach On: www.jugendopposition.de .
• Thomas Auerbach author portrait from Ch. Links Verlag
• Thomas_Auerbach in the contemporary witness portal
• Digital condolence book for Thomas Auerbach
• Funeral speech on July 2, 2020 by Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk and Tom Sello . In: havemann-gesellschaft.de

Individual evidence

1. ^ Digital book of condolences for Thomas Auerbach. Robert Havemann Gesellschaft, accessed June 8, 2020 . 
2. ↑ Ehrhart Neubert, Thomas Auerbach: "It can be different": Opposition and resistance in Thuringia 1945-1989 . Böhlau Verlag Köln Weimar, 2005, ISBN 978-3-412-08804-0 ( google.de [accessed on April 9, 2017]).