Commemoration of June 17, 1953

The speech of the Lord Mayor Dr. Thomas Nitzsche

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am delighted that you have gathered here today to commemorate the popular uprising on June 17, 1953. This fall, we will be celebrating the 35th anniversary of German reunification. The Peaceful Revolution in the former GDR lies 36 years behind us. Many of us were still very young back then. In a few years' time, the time that has passed since the end of the GDR will be longer than the GDR even existed.

But this fact does not justify forgetting what happened in the GDR back then. For after the liberation of Germany from National Socialism, the Soviet-occupied zone by no means entered a period of freedom. The desired "dictatorship of the proletariat" was associated with the suppression of dissent and the restriction and undermining of human rights. The memory of the popular uprising on June 17, 1953 shaped the consciousness of this city for the following decades, not officially on the part of the GDR government, but in the memory of the people. Thousands marched through the city to Holzmarkt that day. There were riots and devastation in public buildings, which could only be stopped by the deployment of Soviet tanks.

Arrests were made. Alfred Diener was shot by summary execution the following day. Walter Scheler, who later became an honorary citizen of the city, was sentenced to 25 years in prison and had to remain in custody until he was granted clemency in 1961, including three years in solitary confinement. The GDR regime had prevailed. But both sides, the people and those in power, knew what was possible if you stand up for your rights with courage and determination, and what threatens to happen if the oppression becomes too strong.

Traditionally, we meet here on this day at the "Memorial to the Politically Persecuted in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ) and in the GDR between 1945 and 1989". The memorial is symbolic of many events and people that show the resistance and also the victims of these 44 years. Many of these are inscribed on individual boxes. There is also a cardboard box with the inscription "1965 Braunsdorf", a name that probably few people immediately associate with today. The inscription refers to the founding of the Braunsdorf / Dittrichshütte preparatory home near Saalfeld in 1957 and the appointment of Walter Schilling as pastor in the local parish and at the same time as youth pastor in the church district.

Walter Schilling was born in Sonneberg on February 28, 1930. He was not admitted to university in the Soviet occupation zone, which is why he went to Münster and Heidelberg in 1950 to study theology. He completed his studies here in Jena in 1955 and, after his vicariate, became a district youth and parish pastor in Braunsdorf/Dittrichshütte near Saalfeld two years later. From 1959, he set up a church youth center in an outbuilding of the parish hall and took over its management. At first, it was still a rather traditional youth work, but already with new forms. It is reported, for example, that in 1968 a clique of long-haired youths, who had their meeting place at Saalfeld station and often got into trouble with the police, approached Schilling and asked to join the young congregation there.

The young people here experienced the church as a place where they could hold discussions without prohibitions and where more was allowed musically and artistically than in state cultural centers. Young people coming to church and looking for a safe space was a GDR-wide phenomenon at the time. However, only some of these efforts were successful in the long term, as Christians were usually no more tolerant than other GDR citizens. In Braunsdorf, however, youth work gradually changed and developed into a center of attraction for non-conformist young people not only from Thuringia, but from all over the GDR. Schilling's concept was based on the independence of the young people.

Everything such as shopping, cooking, washing up and organizing the day was the responsibility of the young people. In doing so, he struck a chord with many young people striving for autonomy, who hitchhiked around the country with long hair, jeans and parkas, demonstrating their independence from conformists. Soon there were complaints from the neighborhood about disturbing the peace, among other things. The Ministry for State Security registered that young people were allegedly refusing to serve in the army under Schilling's influence. The state began to exert pressure on the church. The church passed the pressure on to the pastor, not least because not everyone in the church was happy with Schilling's concept of youth work. In 1974, Schilling was relieved of the management of the home by the church leadership because he had hidden a conscientious objector. However, Walter Schilling had set the ball rolling. The open work he and his fellow campaigners initiated developed into a GDR-wide network of people who became active in various youth work projects. In contrast to traditional forms of church youth work, the focus here was very much on the changes in GDR society, which prevented people from developing freely. In 1978 and 1979, Offene Arbeit in Rudolstadt organized the JUNE workshops with the help of Schilling, which were attended by several thousand young people from all over the GDR. The event planned for 1980 was banned.

Because of its open concept, JUNE had a strong impact on other major events in the GDR Protestant church, such as the Blues Masses of 1979-1986 and even the Church Days from Below in Berlin in 1987 and in Halle in 1988. In 1981, the GDR government enforced the closure of the Rüstzeitheim, officially for hygienic reasons. However, the Open Work network, which had found locations in numerous cities such as Erfurt, Jena, Halle and Berlin, joined forces with other resistant grassroots groups in Berlin in 1987 to form the "Church from Below" and was thus a key driving force that ultimately led to the Peaceful Revolution of 1989. The theologian and GDR opposition activist Ehrhart Neubert attributes a "key function in the entire GDR" to Schilling and considers the young opposition activists who gathered under Schilling's protection to be the nucleus of the GDR opposition.

What is described is not about murder, imprisonment or similar extreme excesses of the GDR regime, even if the Ministry for State Security always had a hand in it. Walter Schilling's life was characterized by values such as humanity and sincerity, trust in young people and a commitment to freedom of thought and opinion. He was - certainly unintentionally - a revolutionary of small steps, which only developed their full effect over the course of the following decades.

On August 1, 1975, 50 years ago, the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation (CSCE) was signed in Helsinki by 35 states, including the GDR. On the initiative of Finland, which was considered neutral, talks had taken place at the highest political level, the result of which was to be a Final Act. The aim was to defuse the threat of nuclear war between the countries of NATO and the Warsaw Treaty, which were irreconcilably opposed to each other. For the Eastern Bloc, the Helsinki Final Act brought recognition of the borders of the post-war order, the commandment of non-interference and better economic exchange with the West. In return, the GDR recognized individual human rights. These included freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief for all without distinction of race, sex, language or religion. Although immediately after the conclusion of the conference it looked as if the communist states had prevailed on key points, over the following years the human rights recognized by the Eastern Bloc states became increasingly important. The signatory states undertook to publish the Final Act. This gave human rights the status of an enforceable right in the GDR - albeit not in GDR courts. The SED stubbornly refused to actually grant these human rights and was no longer able to dispel the GDR opposition's reference to them.

This is one of the reasons why the CSCE Final Act is commemorated here at the memorial with an inscription.
In the fall of 1989, the demonstrators, many of them courageous members of the "Church from Below", demanded compliance with the human rights that the GDR had signed up to. June 17, 1953 remained in the consciousness of the people of the GDR. Despite the defeat of the uprising, change is possible - that was the experience and hope of the time. It takes courage to stand up for it. The state's misguided wage policy provided the fuel that caused the GDR powder keg to explode. Even the change of course ordered by Stalin's successors in the course of 1953 could not change this. The easing of various restrictions and coercive measures, such as the withdrawal of the standard increases on June 11, came too late to defuse the explosive situation. At the time, Jena was a center of the swelling mass protests in Thuringia. On June 17, 1953, columns of workers marched in a disciplined and unified manner from the Zeiss-Südwerk and the Jena glassworks in Otto-Schott-Straße to Holzmarkt, chanting: "Goatee, belly and glasses - are not the will of the people!".

Their democratic demands for the resignation of the SED government, free elections and the release of all political prisoners filled the public space. At midday, up to 25,000 demonstrators are said to have gathered on the Holzmarkt. After a state of emergency was declared, several hundred demonstrators were arrested. Of these, 110 defendants received long prison sentences. The Jena employee representatives Walter Scheler and Herbert Bähmisch were each sentenced to 25 years in a labor camp. The locksmith Alfred Diener was sentenced by a Soviet military tribunal without a defense in summary proceedings. He was shot in Weimar on June 18, 1953. Nevertheless, the nationwide social protests by industrial workers, farmers, tradesmen and craftsmen in the summer of 1953 forced the communist rulers in Moscow to make significant concessions in order to stabilize the SED regime. On January 1, 1954, the Soviet Union waived its reparations payments and reduced the high costs of occupation. The workers' uprising in the southern and central districts of the GDR had demonstrated the limits and illegitimacy of the ruling regime, despite the suppression and numerous victims of the terror in the aftermath of June 17.
It was the first spontaneous mass uprising against the apparatus of exploitation and oppression in East Central Europe, which took on grassroots democratic characteristics in some large companies - such as the Jena glassworks.

On an international scale, June 17 ushered in a wave of rebellion by workers and employees that extended to Poland and Hungary in 1956, Prague in 1968, the strike movement on the Polish Baltic coast in December 1970, the founding of the independent trade union Solidarność ten years later in Gdansk and the October 9, 1989 demonstrations on the Leipzig Ring. The uprising of the people on June 17, 1953 required courage and determination, without which the Peaceful Revolution of 1989 would not have been possible. The fact that people found the courage to network in opposition circles and openly stand up for human rights is thanks in part to committed individuals such as Walter Schilling and his circle. This is why the box with the inscription "1965 Braunsdorf" stands here at the memorial. It is and remains important that we remember the specific events here on site, the individual fates of the people, which are conditioned and framed by events on a larger scale such as the CSCE Final Act. June 17 offers us the opportunity to remain aware that the democratic freedoms and constitutional guarantees that we enjoy today cannot be taken for granted.

The fact that people continue to come to this memorial regardless of commemoration days - be it participants in themed city tours, study groups or relatives or friends of victims who lay flowers here or light an eternal light - shows that the remembrance of and confrontation with the GDR dictatorship is not over. "To all those whose human dignity was violated, to the persecuted who stood up for democracy and human rights against communist dictatorship." - reads the inscription on the metal plate in front of the memorial. In memory of the victims of the popular uprising on June 17, 1953, I would now ask you to observe a minute's silence together.