Since the late Nineteen Sixties, Gerd Poppe fought in opposition to the GDR dictatorship, and his buddies had been among the many regime critics reminiscent of Wolf Biermann and Robert Havemann. Katrin Göring-Eckhardt additionally praised the 84-year-old, who has now died as an vital impulse supplier for the Bündnis 90/Die Greens social gathering.
The GDR opposition and human rights activist Gerd Poppe is useless. This introduced the Federal Foundation for processing the SED dictatorship on its web site. He died on Saturday on the age of 84.
“Gerd Poppe was one of that small group of women and men who have been in the GDR in the GDR since the 1970s.
Poppe has been involved in the GDR with great danger to the SED regime since 1968. He made friends with regime critics Robert Havemann († 72) and the songwriter Wolf Biermann (88), organized readings by GDR critics, founded an opposition group, writes “Bild”. In the short term, he was also in custody because of his commitment to freedom and democracy. “Poppe stood for an opposition that was non -violent, true to the rules and the longer term,” writes the Federal Foundation.
After the peaceful revolution of 1989, he was a minister without a business area in the GDR government and later member of the Bundestag for Bündnis 90/Die Greens. As the first representative of the Federal Government for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Aid, he campaigned internationally for these topics.
The historian Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk praised Poppe, with whom he was also personally friends, at X with the words: “The most free fighter coronary heart I do know has simply stopped beating (…) With Poppe, our nation loses one of many very huge personalities of resistance to communist dictatorship”.
The Greens owe him a lot, writes Göring-Eckardt
The Green Member of the Bundestag Katrin Göring-Eckardt described Poppe as a friendly “fighter for freedom”. “His dedication was contaminated not as a result of he was an incredible chief, however a convincing discussant,” wrote Göring-Eckardt at X. The Greens would have owed a lot to him. “Above all, the lifelike course in overseas coverage.”
She reminded Poppe’s role during the wars in the Balkans. At the time, he fought the fight for taking responsibility, also militarily. “He can be very absent and his recommendation in these fragile occasions wherein freedom is threatened in every single place.”
Poppe, the AFP agency also wrote it in its report, criticized Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China against other peoples more than 20 years ago. On the day of human rights in 2002, he wrote, “the suppression of complete peoples – Uigures, Tibetans, Chechens – is just not a contribution to anti -terrorism. On the opposite: it solely creates the breeding floor for the rise in extremist violence.”
AFP / CRAST
https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article255824714/Im-Alter-von-84-Jahren-Ehemaliger-DDR-Buergerrechtler-Gerd-Poppe-ist-gestorben.html