Ulrike Poppe

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Ulrike Poppe (2012)

Ulrike Poppe , née Wick (born January 26, 1953 in Rostock ) is a civil rights activist and former opposition activist in the GDR . From March 2010 to September 2017 she was the first Brandenburg state commissioner to come to terms with the consequences of the communist dictatorship . As such, she dealt, among other things, with the files left behind by the Ministry for State Security .

Life

Ulrike Poppe was born in Rostock as the daughter of a historian and a Slavist and grew up in Hohen Neuendorf near Berlin. She broke off her studies of art education and history at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1973. After working as an assistant in a children's home and in the psychiatric clinic of the Charité , she worked as an assistant at the Museum of German History from 1976 to 1988 .

In 1980 she opened the first independent children's shop in East Berlin with like-minded people, and in 1982 she co-founded the network " Women for Peace ".

Due to her participation in opposition circles, she was subjected to disruptive measures by the Ministry for State Security (MfS) . In 1983 Ulrike Poppe and Bärbel Bohley were arrested on suspicion of treasonous communications and taken to the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen remand prison. Due to massive protests at home and abroad, however, she was released after six weeks of pre- trial detention.

Poppe had been a member of the Peace and Human Rights Initiative since 1985 . In doing so, Poppe initially concentrated, inspired by the human rights organization Charter 77, founded in Czechoslovakia in 1977, and the Polish Solidarnosc , above all on human rights violations in the Eastern bloc states and especially those in the GDR. After the massacre on Tian'anmen Square , the initiative organized a protest in front of the Chinese embassy in Pankow in 1989. Like all protesters, Poppe was arrested and held overnight at a police station.

In 1987/88 Poppe was Berlin-Brandenburger regional representative in the continuation committee of the GDR-wide network of independent groups "Peace in Practice" and participated in the working group "Rejection of Practice and Principle of Demarcation" from 1987 to 1989.

In the same year Ulrike Poppe co-founded the citizens' movement Democracy Now (DJ), of which she was a member until 1991. On November 26, 1989, Poppe was one of the first to sign the appeal for our country , which spoke out in favor of an independent socialist GDR and against its appropriation by the Federal Republic. A few days later, Egon Krenz also signed it as a representative of the SED . From December 1989 to March 1990 Ulrike Poppe represented the DJ at the central round table , after which she was an employee of the Volkskammer faction “Bündnis 90”.

From 1992 to February 2010 she worked as a director of studies for politics and contemporary history at the Evangelical Academy Berlin-Brandenburg and has been a member of the board of trustees of the Institute for German Research at the Ruhr University Bochum since 2002 . In 1999 she was briefly a member of the founding board of the Green Academy at the Heinrich Böll Foundation .

Ulrike Poppe is a member of the board of directors of Gegen Vergessen - Für Demokratie , a member of the board of directors of the Robert Havemann Society , a member of the advisory board on social reappraisal of the Federal Foundation for the coming to terms with the SED dictatorship and on the advisory board of the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen memorial .

In July 2009 the Brandenburg state parliament decided to set up a representative from the state of Brandenburg to deal with the consequences of the communist dictatorship . Ulrike Poppe was unanimously elected to this office on December 17, 2009 at the suggestion of the state government. Her tasks include advising people who are directly and indirectly affected by persecution during the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR, arranging psychosocial care and dealing with the documents of the Stasi; it also informs the public and advises the state's public authorities. On February 25, 2010, the state parliament subordinated its office to the official and legal supervision of the Brandenburg state parliament in order to ensure greater independence. She retired in September 2017.

family

From 1979 to 1997 Ulrike Poppe was married to the GDR civil rights activist Gerd Poppe , with whom she has two children. She has been married to the political scientist Claus Offe since 2001 .

Honors

Works

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ oral history interview with Ulrike Poppe. In: Sources on the history of human rights. Working Group Human Rights in the 20th Century, March 20, 2014, accessed on December 16, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Appeal “For our country”: http://www.glasnost.de/hist/ddr/89appell.html
  3. ↑ Ulrike Poppe becomes curator of the IDF ( Memento of July 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), message from the Institute for German Research at the Ruhr University Bochum
  4. ↑ Law on the Representative of the State of Brandenburg to Process the Consequences of the Communist Dictatorship of July 7, 2009
  5. ↑ https://www.landtag.brandenburg.de/de/mektivenlandtag_erhaelt_dritten_taetigkeitsbericht_der_aufarbeitbeauftragten/748779?_referer=396519
  6. ↑ http://www.parldok.brandenburg.de/parladoku/w5/drs/ab_0400/457.pdf
  7. ^ Change of office of the country commissioner to deal with the consequences of the communist dictatorship. Ceremony in the Brandenburg State Parliament on September 19 , 2017 , press release by the Office of the State Commissioner, September 21, 2017.
  8. ^ Hermann Wentker: From the peace and human rights movement to the peaceful revolution - Ulrike Poppe (born 1953) . In: Bastian Hein, Manfred Kittel, Horst Möller (eds.): Faces of Democracy. Portraits on German contemporary history . Pp. 343–359, here 347.
  9. ↑ We remember the peaceful demonstrators in autumn 1989. Theodor Heuss Foundation , accessed on February 23, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Poppe, Ulrike
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wick, Ulrike (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German GDR civil rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH January 26, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Rostock