Christian Führer
Christian leader ( born March 5, 1943 in Leipzig) is Evangelical- Lutheran pastor in retirement. He was parish priest of St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig, held weekly prayers for peace since 1982.
Life
Leader comes from a pastor's family. His father was a pastor for 40 years in Langenleuba upper grove where Christian grew up with two older sisters also. Then he attended the classical section, Ernst -Abbe- secondary school in Eisenach. From 1961 to 1966 studied leaders at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig Protestant theology. After ordination in 1968, he was pastor in Lastau and at the same time in Colditz. During this time the four children of the couple leaders came to the world. 1980 Christian leader was appointed pastor of St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig.
Prayers for Peace
As part of the Decade of Peace, which was created in 1980 as a joint protest of the evangelical youth parish offices in East and West, organized guide events from which emerged since the September 20, 1982 every Monday held at St. Nicholas Church prayers for peace against the arms race in East and West. As of 1986, the peace prayers were by Christopher Bliss Berger, the pastor of the St. Luke community, coordinated.
Let 1986 Christian leader signs reading Nikolai Church - open attach to all. In 1987 he organized a pilgrimage in the context of the Olof Palme Peace March and a discussion group hope for wishing to leave. In 1988, he moderated the Fürbittandachten for the occasion of the Luxembourg - Liebknecht demonstration in Berlin arrested. With the presentation of life and stay in the GDR, he turned to be emigrants.
In the summer of 1988, he bowed to pressure from government agencies and supported the superintendency Leipzig-Ost in excluding the Leipzig civil rights groups from the design of prayers for peace. Only after two months of intense protests could Christoph bliss Berger and organized Leipzig opposition - such as Human Rights Working Group, Working Group on Justice, Initiative Group Life, Working Group on Environmental Protection, Women for Peace - reach a compromise, the design of the prayers for peace under the direction and responsibility of the groups pastor allowed. The groups were then supported alongside Christoph Berger bliss of the pastors Klaus Kaden and Rolf -Michael Turek and the priest Hans -Friedrich Fischer.
The authorities of the GDR practiced further from pressure to adjust the peace prayers. Since the spring of 1989, the situation came to a head, access roads were controlled, and " fed " suspects. On 26 June 1989 leaving Christian leader in the Prayer for Peace " a letter of protest from 30 people to the Chinese Embassy to protest against the death penalty in China."
On October 9, there was a large contingent of members of the NVA, fighting groups of the working class, police and employees of the Ministry of State Security in civilian clothes. They had about 1000 SED members ordered to the Nikolai Church, of which already filled to 14 clock about 600 the nave. As of noon, the "appeal " was to nonviolence three subversive groups Leipzig ( Working Group on Human Rights, Working Group on Justice and the Working Group on Environmental Protection ) as distributed illegally printed leaflets and afternoon read in the churches of the city center. Shortly before the end of the peace prayer in St. Nicholas Church, the blessing of the bishop, was a " call " of the Gewandhaus Orchestra Kurt Masur, the cabaret artist Bernd -Lutz Lange, the theologian Peter Zimmermann and three secretaries of the SED district leadership (known as the " call of the Leipzig Six " ) read, which also called for non-violence. In fact, the following demonstration of more than 70,000 participants ran (some sources say up to 100,000 ) without any use of force.
After the peaceful revolution
After 1989, particularly for the unemployed leaders sat on; it was the Church unemployed initiative Leipzig, 1993, the Coordination Group Ecclesiastical unemployment initiatives Saxony.
Signed in December 2001 as the only leader Leipziger the call from the former GDR opposition " We are tired of it ... "
Together with Wolfgang Tiefensee leaders announced in March 2002 the saying "We are the people" as a trademark ( Class 35: Advertising ) in order to prevent " abuse " of the sentence.
Since the beginning of the Monday demonstrations against " Hartz IV " in Leipzig he had invited again to prayers for peace before the demonstrations in the Nikolai Church. After initial participation in these demonstrations against the "Hartz IV" Christian leaders spoke just then for " Hartz IV " as " finally initiated [n ] start necessary reforms of our welfare state " as though the day before, on August 29, 2004, which " Statement by members of former GDR opposition groups: We protest against Hartz IV " was released.
After January 24, 2006, two engineers working in Iraq Bennewitzer Cryotec were kidnapped, hundreds of people mobilized the priest in the tradition of the Monday prayer vigils. Also at the time and again to be held in Leipzig marches of the Hamburg right-wing Christian Worchester ( last seen on October 3, 2006) is one guide to the initiators of peaceful counter-demonstrations along the lines of 1989.
On March 30, 2008, was leader of his farewell Mass in St. Nicholas Church and went into retirement. On 3 September 2012, the Bild newspaper criticized its call for the abolition of capitalism.
The German Patent and Trademark Office has decided on February 6, 2013, that the word mark applied for by leader 2002 "We are the people" is deleted due to lack of commercial use. The civil rights activist Angelika Kanitz had requested the deletion because the sentence should remain as free as it has been formulated in 1989.