OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: FROM PRAYER TO DEMONSTRATION: The Neglected History of East German Churches in the 1980s

Markus Meckel admits, “That is something which we had never considered. It was all about freedom when we founded the first peace groupings in East Germany. In February 1983 the first base communities were formed under the banner ‘Concrete Action for Peace’. We got to know each other and shared our phone numbers.[Only] with Michael Gorbachev did we gain a new perspective. Already, by 1987, I had had the feeling that Gorbachev wouldn’t let the tanks roll in. The question of unification was far from our minds as we thought that was far too unrealistic at the time.”

Rainer Eppelmann chimes in, “We wanted to make the GDR more humane and people friendlier. I had forbidden myself to even consider more than that possible. I had no idea why the Russians would be willing to pull 300,000 troops from our soil. After all, they had fought terribly hard to get there [during WWII] and it had cost them so much [in terms of lives]. All we were trying to do was to encourage the members of our communities [or fellowships]. However, these activities became more-and-more political as time went on, for example, in 1982 when Robert Havemann made the Berlin Appeal public.”

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Eppelmann continues, “In the [Berlin] appeal, with its many signatures, we demanded to have a peace movement independent of the GDR government. Later, a qualitative leap in this process was made when we realized that we needed to found alternative groupings to the government, so that we could clearly challenge or question actions of the SED’s [East German Communist Party] leadership. However, in doing this we never once created any political party. That’s because whoever challenged the sacred-cow of the SED would have been prosecuted in court.”

Meckel explained, “The problem was that there was no long-standing tradition of opposition in East Germany. Until 1961, whoever was politically persecuted simply moved to the West. After the wall was built in 1961, the East German government rounded up the discontented East Germans and simply sold them to the West. Unlike in Poland, Czechoslavakia, and Hungary, we [in the GDR] suffered from a continuous brain drain of critical and alternative thinkers.”

I have to note here that during the 1970s and 1980s, West Germany actually paid money, i.e. a sort of ransom, to the East German government to take in dissidents from the SED regime.

Meckel, who was pastor in the small village of Vipperow in East Germany most of those decades, added, “Only with the Peace and Disarmament Movement [starting in the early 1980s] were opposition cells able to begin to create networks. In my town of Vipperow the project started rather banally. A man came up to me one day and asked what I thought should be done against all the [nuclear] rockets. Since we couldn’t find any solution at the time in our discussion, we decided to set up a meeting later and discuss it further. Suddenly, 20 people showed up to talk about this particular issue.”

The interviewer asked, “Were they all church people?”

Meckel answered, “Not all of them. My superintendent was like many in the church at that time [in the East]. He looked at our meeting critically. The superintendent said, "Other pastors raise bees, but Meckel plays politics.” [Nevertheless], as the Ecumenical Council in Vancouver in 1983 officially started a ‘Conciliation Process for Justice, Peace, and Preservation of Species’, the Peace, Environment, and Human Rights groups inside the Evangelical Church [in East Germany] received wider recognition.”

Eppelmann noted, “The Superpowers put up more and more nuclear warheads. We thought: OH HEAVENS NO! How many times do you want to destroy the earth? Here we in [the tiny] East Germany found ourselves in the middle of a weapons buildup with a country [the USSR] which constantly pretending to be a peace dove nation. They blamed the Americans for the Pershing missiles but put more warheads on their SS-20s. Nevertheless, strategically speaking, this was our chance [in East Germany]—as long as we could operate and function under the banner of ‘Peace’, the powers-that-be could not touch us [in the church]. Soon, alongside peace, human rights and environment became a core focus of ours, as well.”

“Why did these peace groups mostly develop under [or near] the umbrella of the church?” asked the interviewer.

Eppelmann explained, “There was a law or principle in communist East Germany, whereby theoretically anyone could assemble and demonstrate. However, in practice, no one ever got such permission to assemble. The only exception to this rule was with the Church, which could hold its meetings whenever--and almost wherever—it wanted to.”

Meckel jumped in, “The State tried to restrict assemblies of the church to only activities of worship. However, we in the church determined what ‘worship services’ looked like. This is how artists, writers, and others marginalized by the government or society could find a voice in our meetings. Particularly, in November each year, this outreach and openness to meet was strongly emphasized by churches around East Germany.”

The interviewer finally asks, “Why were so many ministers of churches involved in the Revolution [in East Germany]?”

Meckel responds, “This is due to our educational training and different emphasis on the problems of individuals and their experiences in the East German society. As I was thrown out of school with the 10th grade, I had to study at a private school run by the church in order to eventually graduate by taking a GED-like exam in East Germany. This is why even as I later served as the nation’s Foreign Minister, my resume clearly shared for all to see that I had had 10th grade education. . . .[On the other hand, by] studying for 15 months outside of the regular school system, I had become a free man. That would not otherwise have been possible [for most in East Germany].”

Eppelmann notes, “ Only inside the Church could one practice speaking freely. This is why when a Round Table was created [in autumn 1989-1990 to work out and create a new society in East Germany], many people from churches were invited to take a seat. One other important thing was that being a minister or a worker in the church, one was able to gain some financial freedom and social freedoms from the state, which the average East German did not have access, too. This sense of security aided me in the 1960s when I went to jail [for my stand against being forced to do military service]. When the state might have put me in jail [in later decades] I thought in confidence of how the church would still both support and take care of my family.”

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