Everyday life – not true to the line

Art and culture were very important to me back then. I was mainly fascinated by painting, graphic art and their developments outside the official scene. Through our studies, we also had contact with various non-governmental art organisations. Many things were openly discussed there – about all kinds of environmental and cultural education. For example, the now renowned gallery owner Judy Lübke had art education students (including fellow students of mine) do gallery services and organisational work.

And I wanted to get to know people, like-minded people with regard to homosexuality. People who were lesbians and with whom you could talk about these things (including my views) without being looked at the wrong way. In the GDR, homosexuality wasn’t talked about at all and it wasn’t until the mid-1980s that things started to thaw out a bit.

I then joined the Protestant student community and the homosexuality working group through a good friend. The first time I went there, I found about 80 men and one woman meeting every fortnight in the student community room in Alfred-Kästner-Straße. It started with the “current quarter of an hour”. Information was provided about activities such as dance events, lectures, of course on the topic of homosexuality or other social events. What people found interesting was noted in the diary. That was the social media of the time, so to speak. Then there was a cultural-political lecture followed by a social gathering with fat sandwiches and wine.

I joined the school service in Delitzsch in August 1989. I travelled every day and the early days were quite difficult. Apart from the Monday demonstrations, I hardly had any contact with former friends and protagonists because I simply didn’t have the time. I was in the Rosalinde women’s group at the time. We always had one Monday a month for women’s events at the Rosalinde – including on 9 October. The singer Gerlinde Kempendorff was invited for a concert. A friend and I were on duty that evening and everything was prepared for the concert.

Gerlinde Kempendorff was there – but nobody came. There was a strange silence in the city. We knew it was a Monday demonstration, but we didn’t know what was happening. At around 10 pm, a swarm of people burst into the Rosalinde and spread such a euphoric atmosphere. It was the most insane evening I’ve ever experienced because there was hope in the air that something would finally change in the GDR. Interestingly, we repeated the event with Gerlinde Kempendorff a year later on the same day. And she looked round and said: “It’s interesting how many people are still there – only half of those who were there the year before.”

My father was persecuted by the Nazi regime… My parents were both in the KPD, then later in the SED and that’s how I am shaped. I learned to be a bookseller in the Leipzig Commission and Wholesale Book Trade (LKG). At that time, we were always looking for young people who had a positive attitude towards the state. That was me and they tried to build me up. I then became a candidate of the SED… that’s two years and then you can become a full member. The rule, of course, is that you become a member. And in the two years it had become clear to me that I da never want to belong … I have always been critical … i have created a wall newspaper in the LKG building … today, one would say… with anti-state_ texts. For some, they were hostile to the state – I thought they were great. I’ve been watched so much since then… that I had had enough and that I also said: I don’t want to become a member of the SED. But my parents, especially my father, dissuaded me from it. I was 20 years old and my father said: If you do this now, then it’s all over. Then you can’t do anything anymore. Then you can not make a professional career, then you actually forfeited your life.

Well, well, actually not good … i thought so… i enter there and continue like this. I became a member and was a bit renitent from the beginning. But it got so bad that I really couldn’t stand it anymore. it was already 1984 or 83 when I wanted to leave the SED. But that was not possible. I didn’t know that you can’t quit. You will be excluded, that was the only method or variant to leave this pile again. And I have – I have to say, I am still amazed today – there was a very large party group in the Leipzig commission and wholesale book trade, that was at least 100 people – in such a party meeting I really went to the desk. I helped to make the statute of the SED and said paragraph by paragraph why I can no longer support das – why das does not work like that. Where I got the courage back then, I really don’t know anymore. When I was 24 or 25, you’re not that young anymore… but that’s what I did and in the end I said: that’s why I don’t want anymore, that’s why I want to quit. They all thought this was outrageous, then a party meeting was called and a vote was taken on whether I should be expelled. There was only one colleague who voted against it … he was also brave. And everyone else was in favor of it, and a party case was opened against me, at the end of which I was then expelled. I was transferred to production in the Leipzig commission and wholesale book trade. This was really a delivery company, so there were assembly lines… where books were put on it and packed … No, I didn’t really want to become that.

… i got a dissolution agreement… and thought: So what!? Then I was looking for a job and just couldn’t find any more. No one took me, because the personnel file – which was still called the cadre file at that time, of course, it was all in there – was always sent to the company where I had applied. I went to job interviews, everything was always positive and then came the cadre file … and I got a rejection. I have been working, I have worked in the light break, the parents of a friend had a light break … Since sheet music was mainly reproduced for music publishers … a highly toxic job! Cabinets with ammonia, everything had to be put in there. …

In today’s Wurzener Straße, which was formerly called Erich-Ferl-Straße, a bookstore was opened by a GDR block party. … NDPD – National Democratic Party of Germany, they existed. The was again to the right of the CDU. And they didn’t care, so I applied as a bookseller. This was a bookstore with handicrafts and I set up a small gallery there. But that was not for me in the long run. I had higher expectations of myself, I have to say that now. It was difficult for me to classify or subordinate myself there. There was such a very young bookseller, she was my boss and das did not suit me.

And then I actually followed this call to the Jewish community. Through the author Bernd Lutz-Lange, who is mainly known as a cabaret artist, he wrote a book about Jews in Leipzig at the time, had contact with the Jewish community and knew that the secretary was retiring there. And since I didn’t have a job in 88… he said: Come on, I’ll take you there, I’ll introduce you. So it happened that I started working in the Jewish community in May 88. Today one would say assistant of the management, at that time I liked _girl for everything. That’s what I was then, I did everything… I kept all the books, I arranged the finances, I received the guests, I cleaned the synagogue if I had to. It was a great time, changed my whole life … in the autumn of ’89 I was still working in the community.

I was 15 – when I started organising various activities together with other young people in the young congregation in Schwerin – including youth services. And the services were deliberately different, of course. This phrase “under the roof of the church” also meant that we could do things there that were otherwise not possible in the GDR. Many young people in the young congregations weren’t church-going back then either. Church was understood and practised differently back then than it is today – it wasn’t a state church, but for us it was mostly opposition.

Environmental issues were really important to us in the young congregation and in the Freund:innen network… forest dieback, brown coal mining, motorway construction… Our environmental campaigns and self-organised youth services were not welcome. Most of us were involved in the “Swords to Ploughshares” peace activities – we wore the peace movement patches on our parkers and bags. Some of us had to take them off again. In 1982, the new military service law came into force: in future, women were also to be called up in the event of mobilisation. I didn’t get on well with GDR politics early on. […]

The constant arms race between East and West preoccupied me early on… 26 August 1978 was a Sunday. An extra newspaper was to be published in the GDR. I thought at the time: now a war is starting. But it was the day Sigmund Jähn flew into space.

In November 1983, I wrote a letter to Erich Honecker, Chairman of the State Council of the GDR: “…in view of the ever closer approaching danger of the stationing of medium-range missiles in Western Europe, I would like to share my fears with you. …the government of the GDR has declared its willingness to station SS 20 missiles on its territory. I find this irresponsible. …I would like to ask you: Please reconsider this decision, including your own. Don’t you get scared? Think about whether you can and want to share responsibility for a world war…” This was one of the reasons why I had a file very early on. I only realised that much later.

State security was something we knew existed – that our phone was being tapped, that
you could go out and offer them something to drink. They then left quickly. My father always said that when you start to be afraid, you can stop. But we didn’t realise the extent of the spying. And there were some people you wouldn’t have thought…