Thomas Kretschmer (civil rights activist)

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Thomas Kretschmer (born December 18, 1955 in Dornburg ) is a German wood sculptor , civil rights activist and former political prisoner in the GDR . In July 1985 he was released after three years of imprisonment after international protests, among others by the prisoners' aid organization Amnesty International , which declared him "Inmate of the Year".

Life

Kretschmer, the son of an educator and a biologist , was raised Catholic and in 1970 at the age of 14 refused state youth ordination in the GDR. In 1972 he began vocational training with a high school diploma in a nursery in Meilitz near Gera . In the same year Kretschmer resigned from the state youth organization in the GDR, the Free German Youth (FDJ), and declared that he would refuse military service in the National People's Army (NVA), although there was no right to conscientious objection in the GDR . In 1972 he lost his training center and the associated opportunity to take the Abitur , and began further training as a nurse at the Jena City Hospital .

In June 1973 Kretschmer attempted to escape across the Czechoslovakian - Austrian border . He was arrested, extradited to the GDR and sentenced by the Jena District Court to 15 months of juvenile imprisonment for "attempting to illegally cross the border ", which he served in the Ichtershausen juvenile detention center . Under the pressure of detention, he first made a declaration of commitment to work for the Ministry for State Security (MfS), which he revoked in writing shortly afterwards to his officer in charge. After his release from prison in 1974, the MfS tried again unsuccessfully to get Kretschmer to work.

Kretschmer has been involved in open and evangelical youth work in Jena since 1974. From 1974 to 1976 he worked as a nurse in the Jena City Hospital and in a home for the disabled in Bad Blankenburg . In 1976 he began studying theology at the Erfurt Preachers' Seminar. Since 1976 Kretschmer lived in a rectory in Apfelstädt near Erfurt. In 1980 he was denied continuation of his studies by the Thuringian official church . In November 1980 he was drafted again for military service and imprisoned for his renewed refusal. In December 1980, he was paroled because he had undertaken to do military service as a construction soldier .

During his service as a construction soldier, Kretschmer showed solidarity with the Polish trade union Solidarność . At New Year 1982 he sent friends a self-made batik cloth with the sophistic inscription “Learn Polish!”, Which was found during a postal inspection. Kretschmer was arrested again in January 1982 and held in the central remand prison of the MfS in Berlin's Magdalenenstrasse until June 1982 . In August 1982 he was sentenced to four and a half years imprisonment by the Halle Military Court for the GDR criminal offenses "impairment of state activity" (§ 214) and "public degradation" (§ 245, 246). The family of the human rights activist imprisoned in the Schwedt military prison was supported by Amnesty International with 100 British pounds. It later became known that Kretschmer's lawyer was an unofficial employee of the MfS in these proceedings and provided reports on his clients.

In January 1985 Kretschmer was transferred to the MfS deportation detention center in Karl-Marx-Stadt and was supposed to be deported to the Federal Republic of Germany , which Kretschmer refused. Due to church and international protests, including by the prisoners' aid organization Amnesty International , which declared him “Inmate of the Year”, Kretschmer was released from prison in July 1985 and worked until 1989 as a church craftsman in Ebersdorf .

During the fall of the Wall and the peaceful revolution in the GDR in 1989, Kretschmer took part in the occupation of the MfS district office in Bad Lobenstein and was a member of the Thuringian citizens' committee to dissolve the MfS. From 1990 to 1994 Kretschmer was a member of the Lobenstein district assembly for the “Church Voting Community”. Kretschmer lives secluded as a wood sculptor in Tegau and in 2001 worked at the Stadtroda specialist clinic with mentally ill patients. In 2014, his civil resistance was honored in a Solidarność exhibition by the Federal Commissioner for Stasi Records (BStU) at the Heinrich Böll Foundation .

literature

  • Christian Halbrock:  Thomas Kretschmer . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • 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 and Resistance in Biographies and Photos . Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-938857-02-1 .
  • Udo Scheer: Vision and Reality. The opposition in Jena in the seventies and eighties . Links, Berlin 1999.
  • H. Pietzsch: Youth between Church a. Country. History of church youth work in Jena 1970–89 . Cologne u. a. 2005.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Why me of all people? In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 1998, pp. 57-60 ( online ).
  2. ↑ a b Thomas Kretschmer, Learn Polish! Batik cloth, Museum of the Havemann Society
  3. ^ A b Anja Mihr: Amnesty International in the GDR: The Stasi 's aim for human rights . Ch.links Verlag, 2002, pp. 214, 215
  4. ↑ Thomas Kretschmer . ( Memento from March 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) ev-akademie-thueringen.de
  5. ↑ Wood sculptors create homage to Unterwellenborn . In: Ostthüringer Zeitung , October 15, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Kretschmer, Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German wood sculptor, civil rights activist and former political prisoner in the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH 18th December 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Dornburg