Wolfgang Schnur

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Wolfgang Schnur at the founding party conference of the Democratic Awakening on December 16, 1989 in Leipzig

Wolfgang Schnur (born June 8, 1944 in Stettin ; † January 16, 2016 in Vienna ) was a German lawyer . He was a lawyer in the German Democratic Republic, a. a. active in the context of the Protestant Church . From 1965 to 1989 he was an unofficial employee of the Ministry for State Security (MfS). During the fall of the Wall in 1989, Schnur was active as a politician. He was a co-founder and chairman of the Democratic Awakening Party for a few months .

Life

Wolfgang Schnur grew up as an orphan in homes in Stettin, on the island of Rügen and in Rostock . After completing his apprenticeship as a bricklayer, he studied law and graduated in 1973 with a degree in law. He initially worked as a lawyer in Binz , and from 1978 with his own law firm in Rostock. In addition, Schnur was one of the most famous church representatives in the GDR. He was a member of the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Mecklenburg , at times Vice-President of the Synod of the Evangelical Church of the Union (EKU) and Synodal of the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR. At the end of the 1980s he worked as a lawyer of trust for the Evangelical Church for numerous well-known opposition members in the GDR. He represented numerous dissidents, civil rights activists and conscientious objectors .

Schnur always had close working contacts with Horst Kasner , Angela Merkel's father , who had been the head of the pastoral college of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg for many years in Templin . Kasner, who was seen as an important intermediary between church and state in a central church function, was a member of the Weißensee working group and from the point of view of the state leadership one of the "progressive" (i.e. SED- friendly) church political forces within the church. Schnur and the Kasner family were on friendly terms. At the end of 1989, Schnur hired Angela Merkel as a full-time employee at the DA on February 1, 1990, and made her his press spokeswoman that same month.

A constant interlocutor of Schnur and Kasner in matters of SED church politics was Clemens de Maizière , who was a Stasi employee and was the father of the later GDR Prime Minister Lothar de Maizière . Clemens de Maizière was also a lawyer in the GDR. He was also a synodal of the Berlin-Brandenburg Church and a leading member of the GDR CDU . The negotiating partner of Clemens de Maizière, Wolfgang Schnur and Horst Kasner in the GDR government was the State Secretary for Church Affairs . From 1979 to 1988 this was Klaus Gysi .

In October 1989, Schnur was a co-founder of the Democratic Awakening Party (DA), at whose founding congress he was elected chairman. He was initially a participant in the Central Round Table , which he left again on December 27, 1989 on charges of “abuse of office and corruption”. After the conservative wing had prevailed in the DA, he co-founded the Alliance for Germany in 1990 , consisting of Democratic Awakening , German Social Union (DSU) and GDR CDU. For several months, Schnur was considered the future Prime Minister of the GDR. The disclosure of his Stasi files in March 1990, a few days before the first free election of the People's Chamber , ended his political career: from 1965 to 1989, the main department XX of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) had him as IM “Torsten” or “Dr. Ralf Schirmer ”. A few days before the free elections in the GDR on March 18, 1990, Schnur had met with his commanding officer. Cord of the DA joined by the chair back and was out of the party excluded . Then he became seriously ill. Rainer Eppelmann became his successor .

Schnur's work for the State Security was always undercover. It was generally known, however, that as a church attorney he had constant, good working contacts with the SED. Even during his time as DA chairman, Schnur maintained close contact with employees of the MfS.

After reunification , he opened a law firm in Berlin in 1991. In 1993 he was withdrawn from the bar for betrayal and "unworthiness" because he had "violated the principles of humanity and the rule of law". The judgment was upheld by the Federal Court of Justice in 1994 . Schnur then worked as an investment and project consultant. In 1997 he was sentenced to a fine for insulting a judge, and in 1999 for delaying bankruptcy.

The Berlin Regional Court sentenced Schnur in 1996 for political suspicion ( Section 241a of the Criminal Code ) to a total imprisonment of one year in two cases, the execution of which was suspended. Schnur had suspected his former clients Stephan Krawczyk and Freya Klier from the Ministry for State Security that they had a connection to Western television and that Klier had hidden a manuscript in the attic of their house that clearly criticized the situation in the GDR.

Most recently Schnur lived impoverished and withdrawn from the public in Vienna . He died on 16 January 2016 Wilhelminenspital of prostate cancer .

literature

Web links

Commons : Wolfgang Schnur  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Wolfgang Schnur: The man who discovered Angela Merkel is dead. Spiegel Online , January 20, 2016, accessed on the same day
  2. Michel Graupner: RBB documentary about Wolfgang Schnur: betrayed and sold. Deep in a parallel world: an RBB documentary shows the double life of Stasi informant Wolfgang Schnur. In: DER TAGESSPIEGEL. November 19, 2017. Retrieved July 23, 2018 .
  3. Professional: Wolfgang Schnur . Der Spiegel 29/1994, July 18, 1994, p. 168.
    Federal Court of Justice confirms decision: Cord loses approval . Berliner Zeitung , July 14, 2004.
  4. ^ GDR lawyer Wolfgang Schnur is dead . tagesschau.de , January 19, 2016.
  5. Ralf Schuler, Peter Tiede, Hartmut Kascha: Wende politician died of cancer: Wolfgang Schnur († 71) is dead . bild.de , January 19, 2016.