Initiative for Peace and Human Rights
The Initiative for Peace and Human Rights ( IFM) was one of the civil rights movements in the GDR, which significantly helped shape the turn. It was officially founded on 24 January 1986, making it one of the oldest groups of the civil rights movement in the GDR.
Before the turn
The IFM was not founded as a single of the new groupings of the turning point in the GDR until 1989. It emerged from a human rights seminar in Berlin (East) 1985. The founding members included Bärbel Bohley, Martin Böttger, Werner Fischer, Ralf Hirsch, Gerd Poppe, Ulrike Poppe, Wolfgang Templin and Reinhard white chicken. The initiative had only a loose organizational structure; in the beginning it consisted of about 25 members. Although they also used the church public, but understood to be independent of the Church from the beginning and thus had held a privileged position within the human rights and democracy movement in the GDR. The main objectives were the promotion of human rights and peacekeeping. The initiative campaigned for disarmament and " demilitarization " and turned against any kind of authoritarian structure, against the glorification of violence and against the exclusion of minorities and foreigners. The positions were published among others in the illegal magazine " grenzfall ".
In February 1986, the social-revolutionary wing split off to Thomas Klein and Reinhard Schult and founded the group votes against.
In January 1988, several members of the IFM were arrested in connection with the traditional Liebknecht- Luxembourg - demonstration in Berlin, and then deported to the West. Ralf Hirsch was expatriated.
As the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu was invited to a working visit to the GDR in November 1988, organized civil rights activists in the Gethsemane church a Romania evening to draw attention to the violation of fundamental rights and the disastrous supply situation in Romania. As a result, several members of the IFM were placed under house arrest during the Ceauşescu visit.
These and other " decomposition operations" of the Stasi complicated the work of the IFM significantly in the following years. In March 1989, the IFM opened to a DDR -wide opposition group.
Turning time
It was only during the peaceful revolution in 1989, the Initiative for Peace and Human Rights was fully active again. Its membership was, however, in comparison to the new opposition groups and parties rather modest. The IFM was involved with two members of the round table and stood with Gerd Poppe from February 1990 in the Modrow government a minister without portfolio.
The first free parliamentary elections on 18 March 1990 the IFM went with the new forum, Democracy Now, pursued the very similar political goals, an electoral alliance under the name Alliance 90 a. The list connecting Alliance 90 posted on election day 2.9% of the vote and won 12 seats in the People's Chamber. For Peace and Human Rights Initiative Marianne Birthler and Gerd Poppe sat in the group Alliance 90/Grüne to which the members of the Alliance 90 with those of the Green Party had joined forces in the GDR. The accession of the GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany in accordance with Article 23 of the Basic Law aF refused the alliance.
One of the first all-German elections on 2 December 1990 to the Bundestag, the IFM and the Neues Forum, Democracy in the list union alliance 90/Grüne stepped Now, the Independent Women's Association ( UFV ) and the Party "The Greens " - citizens ' movement ( B90/Gr ) to. This achieved in East Germany eight mandates, under which Gerd Poppe was the only representative of the IFM.
Subsequent development
In September 1991, the Initiative for Peace and Human Rights went into the civil rights movement newly formed Alliance 90, which had been the name for different coalitions until then and now the IFM, democracy united now and parts of the New Forum in itself. In May 1993, the merger of Alliance 90 with the Green Party was the party Alliance 90/The Greens.