Environment library

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The Berlin Environmental Library in January 1990

The environmental library (also environmental library ) in the basement of the parish hall of the Zionskirchengemeinde in Berlin's Mitte district was an important meeting point for the opposition environmental , peace and third world movements in the GDR from 1986 to 1990 . The library continued to operate after 1990 and was closed in 1998.

Foundation and conception

Issue of the Telegraph

The environmental library was founded on September 2nd, 1986 on the initiative of environmentalists Carlo Jordan , Oliver Kämper , Wolfgang Rüddenklau and Christian Halbrock . The Polish flying universities served as a model . The pastor at the Zionskirche, Hans Simon, provided the initiators with two basement rooms in the parish hall for this purpose. In addition to the collection of mostly forbidden books and magazines on environmental and human rights issues, the library also served as a place for conspiratorial meetings of GDR opposition members. Lectures and concerts by opposition civil rights activists and artists took place. There were also regular film screenings.

The environmental library produced the samizdat magazine Umweltblätter , which was later given the title telegraph . Until the fall of the Berlin Wall, this magazine became the most important organ of the GDR opposition . Other opposition publications, including the Grenzfall , were also printed in the environmental library, which was the only non-state-controlled printer in the GDR.

Stasi raid 1987

On the night of November 24th to 25th, the Ministry for State Security (MfS) started the "Aktionfallen", in which the library was searched and several employees were arrested. With this raid , the library gained international fame. The Western media reported extensively on the event and provided the activists organized in the environmental library with a previously unknown public. All over the GDR there were expressions of solidarity for the environmental library and its employees. The arrested activists of the environmental library did not stay long in custody and were all released with no punishment. The environmental library gained enormous popularity after the MfS raid. It was tolerated by the regime until the end of the GDR.

Internal conflicts 1988

Carlo Jordan, who left the environmental library in 1988 (here in 1990 as spokesman for the GDR Green Party)

In the spring of 1988 an internal dispute broke out in the environmental library about the further strategy of the GDR environmental movement. Part of the group had the goal of expanding the environmental library even further into a network for the entire GDR environmental movement. Another group rejected these considerations, fearing that this could lead to a centralization of the movement and ultimately to party-like structures. An unofficial employee of the MfS fueled the conflict between the two camps . Finally, a group around the later party spokesman of the Green Party in the GDR , Carlo Jordan, split off and founded the green-ecological network Arche , with which they tried to create a network of the GDR environmental movement.

Turn of 1989/1990

In 1989 the activists of the environmental library took part in several vigils and other protests. The magazine telegraph , published by the environmental library, was the only opposition journalistic GDR publication. In the fall of 1990, the environmental library also took part in a hunger strike , with which the Stasi Records Act was finally won.

After the turn

In 1990 the employees of the Berlin Environmental Library left the Zion Church community. After a short squatter intermezzo at Lottumstrasse 10a, the UB employees moved into shops at Schliemannstrasse 18 in the Prenzlauer Berg district . In order to be able to survive in the federal German legal system, the University Library founded a registered association . From 1991 it housed the Matthias Domaschk Archive as an important private archive on the opposition movements of the GDR era. She organized various activities or took part in them, including a warship occupation in Peenemünde, demonstrations against the war in Chechnya and solidarity campaigns with the Zapatistas in Mexico.

In December 1998 the environmental library was forced to stop its activities due to lack of financial means and to dissolve the association. The holdings went to the Robert Havemann Society and the environmental library of the Green League . The magazine of the Berlin Environmental Library, the telegraph , is still published today.

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