Weißenseer leaves

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The Weißenseer Blätter ( WBl ) was the magazine of the socialist working group of the Evangelical Church Berlin-Brandenburg, which was supported by the GDR State Security , and existed from 1982 to 2006 . The publisher was the Protestant theologian and unofficial employee of the GDR State Security Hanfried Müller .

history

During the GDR era, the WBl appeared at irregular intervals, as this was possible under press law without a license number. In recent years three issues have been printed annually. The WBl were not commercially available, but could be obtained free of charge from the publisher and, in recent years, from the Internet.

The Weißensee working group represented a wing of the Evangelical Church close to the state in the GDR. Its membership shrank in the 1980s, as criticism of the state also increased among left-wing theologians. The remaining core around Hanfried Müller opposed the oppositional movements, which were mainly active in churches, in 1989. During the time of political upheaval, the WBl offered a platform to proponents of a hard line like Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler , who called the turning point and peaceful revolution in the GDR “counter-revolution”.

Since then, the WBl operated a collaboration between Protestant theologians and proponents of orthodox Marxism-Leninism . The appearance of articles by the historian and unofficial employee of the GDR State Security Kurt Gossweiler and the politician Sahra Wagenknecht caused a stir in the Democratic Socialist Party (PDS) . Their essay dealt with the attempts at economic reform in the GDR in the 1960s ( New Economic System ), the stalling of which, in their opinion, was largely responsible for the infirmity of the GDR economy in the Honecker years . She still takes this view today.

The regular authors of the WBl included u. a. West German theologians like Walter Kreck and Eberhard Bethge as well as members of the DKP like the philosopher Hans Heinz Holz . Most of the contributions dealt with the past of the communist movement and the GDR.

The civil rights activist Gerold Hildebrand described the magazine as a “pseudo-Christian battle paper”, in which the authors Hanfried Müller (IM “Hans Meier”), Carl Order (IM “Vogtländer”), Heinrich Fink (IM “Heiner”) and Dieter Frielinghaus frequently agitated against GDR opposition members.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerhard Besier : Church, Politics and Society in the 20th Century , p. 80
  2. ↑ Ehrhart Neubert :  Müller, Hanfried . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  3. ^ Speech by Sahra Wagenknecht at the conference "History in Stories" on October 4, 2009
  4. ↑ Narrative workshop Friedenswerkstatt. Against the militarization of society Horch und Guck issue 57/2007