Speeches by the Lord Mayor of Jena on June 17

The spoken word counts

Speeches by the Lord Mayor Dr. Thomas Nitzsche on 17 June

Commemorative events to mark the 70th anniversary of the GDR uprising on June 17 in Jena

Speech at the wreath-laying ceremony:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

70 years ago today, on a Wednesday, around 3,000 workers went on strike from 8.00 a.m. in the southern factory at Carl-Zeiss-Jena. From 9.00 a.m. there were demonstrations on the Holzmarkt and the buildings of the SED district leaderships of Jena-Stadt and Jena-Land were stormed and vandalized. By 2 p.m., the number of demonstrators between Holzmarkt and the city church had swelled to up to 25,000 people. They demanded free elections, an end to political repression, the release of prisoners and better living and working conditions.

The pent-up anger manifested itself in destroyed party offices, in chants and in violence against those in uniform, state loyalists and functionaries.

In the afternoon, the state also cracked down in Jena with the support of Soviet tanks and armored personnel carriers and a state of emergency was declared. There were numerous arrests and prison sentences; Alfred Diener was shot by summary execution the following day. The protests at Carl Zeiss continued in the following weeks and only gradually came to a standstill due to ongoing repression.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Free State of Thuringia has invited people to Jena for its central commemorative ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the 1953 uprising, because Jena was one of the main sites of the uprising in Thuringia and the GDR. This particularly honors the Jena victims of the uprising and all those who had the courage to stand up against the oppression of the SED regime.

I warmly welcome you, Ms. Pommer, President of the Thuringian State Parliament, Prof. Hoff, Minister for Cultural, Federal and European Affairs and Head of the State Chancellery, and Mr. von der Weiden, President of the Thuringian Constitutional Court.

I would also like to extend a very warm welcome to my colleague Dr. Janik, Mayor of our twin city Erlangen, Prof. Ganzenmüller, Chairman of the Ettersberg Foundation, and Dr. Wurschi, State Commissioner for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship.

Dear contemporary witnesses of the events of 1953, dear relatives, dear members of parliament at federal and state level, dear city councillors, dear pupils of the Otto Schott Grammar School, dear representatives of clubs and associations, churches, the media, dear ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome to you all.

We are gathered here today at the "Memorial to the Politically Persecuted in the Soviet Occupation Zone and in the GDR between 1945 and 1989" and I am delighted that you, Sibylle Mania and Martin Neubert, are also present here today as artists.

June 17, 1953 was a high point of resistance in the GDR against the oppression of the SED dictatorship, but it was to take another 36 years, half a human lifetime, before the regime could be brought down with the peaceful revolution of 1989.

It took decades of resistance, it took courageous women and men who stood up for freedom of expression and assembly, for freedom and free elections, regardless of their personal well-being. This memorial commemorates the courageous people of 1953 as well as those who stood up for their rights, for democracy and freedom before and after, until the goal was achieved.

Remembrance Day also gives us an opportunity to reflect on our freedoms today, to value them and to stand up for them. So I see your participation here today as a tribute to the courageous fighters 70 years ago as well as a commitment to freedom, democracy and the rule of law today.

Thank you very much for being here!

Speech at the commemorative act in the historic town hall

Dear Ms. Pommer

Dear Prof. Hoff,

dear Florian Janik,

Welcome to the Historic Town Hall!

I would like to take this opportunity to extend a particularly warm welcome to Hans-Joachim Preuß, a contemporary witness of June 17, 1953 in Jena who now lives in our twin city of Erlangen, and to the pupils of the Otto Schott Grammar School. We will see them later in a discussion with contemporary witnesses, which I am very much looking forward to!

The commemoration of the popular uprising on June 17, 1953 is also increasingly presenting us with the challenge of how to preserve the memory of the events of 70 years ago in people's minds. There are fewer and fewer contemporary witnesses from back then, which means that opportunities for direct and personal exchange are dwindling. Individual remembrance is gradually transforming into social and cultural remembrance, and this raises the question of what this entails.

I therefore very much welcome the fact that you - if I may still use your first names - are seeking a direct exchange with a contemporary witness from back then. Being personally touched does something to us, to put ourselves as far as possible in the shoes of those times and to understand what happened back then and what people took to the streets for and why.

This morning we, Ms. Pommer, Dr. Wurschi and students unveiled the new information sign about Alfred Diener in Alfred-Diener-Straße in Neu-Lobeda, an initiative of the students. Great, a great result of the content-related work!

Alfred Diener was arrested together with Walter Scheler in 1953. Walter Scheler, an honorary citizen of the city after the peaceful revolution in 1989, was not shot. He was "only" sentenced to 25 years of forced labor. He spent three years in solitary confinement and was pardoned after a further five years. Walter Scheler, born in 1923, survived the war and captivity and was just 23 years old when he returned home in 1946. He probably had a great desire to build a better world.

He joined the SPD and soon the SED, becoming a member of the People's Police. But the founding of the two states alienated him from the political system. It is important to note that he came from the border region near Sonneberg and was later forcibly relocated to Jena as part of "Aktion Ungeziefer".

He was denied a planned course of study because he left the SED in 1949. He then resigned from the police force. After his release from prison in 1961, he worked as a warehouse clerk and health and safety officer for HO restaurants. Then, from 1990, he campaigned for the remembrance of June 17, 1953 and the victims in the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR. In 1993, he was rehabilitated by the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation.

Why am I telling you this? Because Walter Scheler was like many of us: he was young, he had ideals that he stood up for. But he also had a good compass to recognize where injustice and lack of freedom begin and when his conscience demands that he take a stand against them, even at the expense of his own well-being.

In this he can be a role model for us, not just for pupils, but for all of us.