Vera Lengsfeld
Vera Stadtlengsfeld ( born May 4, 1952, in special, Thuringia ) is a German politician and publicist. She was civil rights activist and member of the first freely elected People's Chamber of the GDR. From 1990 to 2005 she was a member of the German Bundestag, initially until 1996 for the Alliance 90/The Greens, since 1996 the CDU. Since then, she is active as a freelance writer. In July 2012, she was elected state chairman of the Association of Victims of Stalinism ( VOS) Berlin- Brandenburg.
Career in the GDR
After high school, Vera Stadtlengsfeld began in 1970 a study of the history of the labor movement at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig and studied philosophy in 1972 at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Following the studies, she worked as a lecturer and researcher at the Central Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR. Since 1975 she was a member of the SED. After a party proceedings she was transferred to the Scientific Information Centre of the Academy of Sciences.
Since 1981 she has worked in various opposition groups. In the fall of 1981, she founded the Peace Circle Pankow. Because of these activities, she received a profession ban and then went to New Life Publishing, where she worked as an editor until 1983. Because of their public protests against the installation of nuclear missiles in the GDR it was excluded in 1983 from the SED. From 1985, she worked as a beekeeper and a translator and began studying theology at Sprachenkonvikt Berlin. She was active in the group votes against and hosted in 1986 the first seminar on human rights in the Protestant community in Berlin -Friedrich field. In 1987 she founded the Church of the bottom. They also frequented the environmental library in the parish hall of the Church of Zion and participated in protests here. Your commitment included the organization of numerous major events of the peace and environmental movements of the GDR. She was a member of the continuation committee for the delegates meeting of the Peace Circle members, the concreteness gathered annually for peace under the title.
In January 1988, she was arrested on the way to Luxembourg Liebknecht demonstration in East Berlin. After their detention in the central remand prison Berlin- Hohenschonhausen the Stasi, she was sentenced by the District Court of Lichtenberg "attempting assembly" to six months in prison. Your lawyer Wolfgang Schnur (then unofficial collaborator of the Stasi ) reached that she agreed to their removal to the West, rather than serve out their sentence. She walked for almost two years after Cambridge in the UK, where she studied religion at St. John 's College of Philosophy and a Master 's degree program completed. On November 9, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall, she returned for personal reasons back in the GDR.
Party offices after the turn
In the course of the Peaceful Revolution, the civil rights activist joined the Green Party in the GDR, was chosen for this on 18 March 1990 in the People's Chamber of the GDR and was until its dissolution on 2 October 1990 Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Disarmament and Defence. She also worked as a representative of the Green Party of the Working Group on New Constitution of the GDR with the Roundtable. This draft constitution, however, was not handled by the People's Chamber. She was elected in the constituency of Berlin and was one of the deputies who were sent on 3 October 1990 from the People's Chamber in the Bundestag.
The elections to the 12th German Bundestag on 2 December 1990 Vera Want Berger was again for the coalition of Alliance 90 and the East German Greens Member of the German Bundestag.
In a parliamentary debate on the Second Gulf War in 1991, they expressed their criticism of by filled a minute of their speaking time in silence until her Bundestag President Rita Süssmuth withdrew the word, accompanied by cheers from the CDU / CSU parliamentary group as " Circus ", " the will can be examined! " Following the merger of alliance 90 and the Greens to form a new party in 1993 Vera Stadtlengsfeld was re-elected in the parliamentary elections in 1994 in the Bundestag.
In June 1996, Vera Stadtlengsfeld was involved in the founding of the Berlin Citizens' Advice Bureau eV, an association for working up the damage caused by the SED dictatorship.
In protest against a feared her future red-red- green coalition, ie a coalition of Alliance 90/The Greens together with the PDS and a " cozying up " or an "open pandering " to this, she joined with other civil rights activists such as Günter Nooke and Ehrhart Neubert on 17 December 1996, the Christian Democratic Union. Lengsfelds allegations were rejected by leading countryside. With her then- party exchange they disappoint other members of the Green Party as the civil rights activist Marianne Birthler who saw better off with the Greens, the East German civil rights movement of reversal time. Stadtlengsfeld joined the CDU / CSU parliamentary group and gave despite request their current term, which they had received on the list of Green Party, not from.
In the elections to the 14th German Bundestag on 27 September 1998, she was elected on the regional list of the CDU in Thuringia and re-elected in the elections to the 15th German Bundestag on 22 September 2002 on the same list. In the same year her autobiography was published.
In 2005, she was defeated in her Thuringian constituency in the lineup for the direct nomination to the Bundestag, after which she declared no longer to stand as a candidate list is available. This ended her time as a Member of the German Bundestag for the time being with the constitution of the Parliament to the 16th legislature on 18 October 2005 for the elections to the Bundestag in 2009 ran Stadtlengsfeld in the Bundestag constituency Berlin- Friedrichshain -. Kreuzberg - Prenzlauer Berg East again for the CDU. Caused a stir their election poster that Stadtlengsfeld and the CDU leader Angela Merkel deep decollete with the slogan " We have more to offer " shows. The targeted direct mandate they missed significantly with 11.6% of the votes first votes. It was the worst of all CDU direct candidates nationwide.
Journalistic activity
Stadtlengsfeld is the author of several books and wrote for Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Rundschau, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Der Spiegel and Focus. She is also a columnist for the Blogs The Axis of Good and The Free World. Vera Stadtlengsfeld is also the author of the monthly magazine peculiarly free and written articles for the Prussian Allgemeine Zeitung and the Bayernkurier.
In 2003 she defended in the boys freedom Martin Hohmann, after he had been excluded because of a criticized as anti-Semitic speech with Lengfelds voice from the CDU. Compared with the Handelsblatt she compared the 2012 Bundestag in relation to the votes on the bailout fund ESM and Fiscal Pact with the GDR People's Chamber.
Private life
Stadtlengsfeld is twice divorced, has three children and was married to his first marriage with journalist Sebastian Kleinschmidt, son of Charles Kleinschmidt. In 1991, she learned from the documents of the Ministry of State Security, that her second husband, the poet Knud Want Berger, she had spied as IM Donald. She filed for divorce and took her maiden name again.
In the documentary Stasi Children - My father was in the Stasi Stadtlengsfeld stated that she learned at the age of 17 years by accident that her father full-time officer in the foreign espionage was at the Ministry of State Security.
Her son Philip Stadtlengsfeld was relegated in the fall of 1988 for political reasons by the East Berlin Carl-von- Ossietzky - secondary school. He is a physicist and CDU politician. By 2011, he was treasurer of the CDU faction of the district council of the Berlin district of Pankow. In the general election in 2013, he joined as a direct candidate for the federal electoral district of Berlin -Mitte.
Honors
For their commitment to human and civil rights in the GDR Stadtlengsfeld In 1990, the Aachen Peace Prize. In 2008 she was honored with the Federal Cross of Merit.
Writings
- Virus of the hypocrites. Interior view of Stasi files. Publisher Espresso / Elephants Press, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-88520-435-5.
- My way to freedom. From now on, we went uphill. Langen Müller Verlag, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-7844-2857-6.
- Restart! What needs to change in politics and society. Worth rethinking. Freedom and fairness rather than equality and justice. Herbig Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-7766-2490-6.
- Traces of Peace workshop. From patchwork tent of the Pankow peace circle. In: Horch and Guck, b. 16, Issue 57 ( 1/2007), pp. 15-17.
- I wanted to be free. The Wall, the Stasi, the revolution. Herbig Verlag, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-7766-2669-8.