In the context of self-evident education & professional life

Of course, when I said something critical, I realized that it didn’t go down well with everyone – at school or university. But I never really had any difficulties in the GDR.

We organized the odd unconventional event at university and certainly attracted a bit of attention sometimes. But it wasn’t anything where I would say I was “in opposition to the system”. I thought a lot about what the GDR was for me, because I didn’t think the politics made sense – especially in relation to young people. The idea of socialism wasn’t actually that bad. But what was being done was not what I imagined socialism to be. But I wasn’t part of any opposition groups at all.

On 2 October, I heard what was said, shouted and demanded at the demonstration. And that was what was driving me too. This … no longer being able to cope with this country. I had a completely wrong idea of those who were meeting in the Nikolai Church and who were involved in the opposition. It wasn’t until 2 October that I realised what was bothering these people and that it was also a lot of what we discussed in the seminar group, what I discussed with friends or with my parents. They were the same things. I was really scared on 9 October. I only went to the demonstration because I had arranged to meet someone and didn’t want to look cowardly. On my own, I think I would have chickened out. A week later, on 16 October, it was completely different: I was no longer afraid at all. There was a certainty that nothing more would come from the state. But shortly afterwards it was more dangerous again because the Nazis came and started beating up the left-wing demonstrators.

Am 2. Oktober habe ich gehört, was auf der Demonstration erzählt, gerufen und gefordert wurde. Und das war das, was mich auch umtrieb. Dieses … mit diesem Land nicht mehr klarzukommen. Ich hatte eine völlig falsche Vorstellung von denen, die sich in der Nikolaikirche trafen und die sich in der Opposition engagierten. Ich habe erst am 2. Oktober festgestellt, was diese Menschen umtreibt und dass das eben auch ganz viel von dem war, was wir in der Seminargruppe besprachen, was ich mit Freundinnen oder auch mit meinen Eltern diskutiert habe. Das waren dieselben Dinge. Am 9. Oktober hatte ich richtig Angst. Ich bin nur zur Demonstration gegangen, weil ich mich mit jemanden verabredet hatte und nicht feige aussehen wollte. Alleine, glaube ich, hätte ich gekniffen. Das war schon eine Woche später, am 16. Oktober, ganz anders: Ich hatte überhaupt keine Angst mehr. Da war so eine Gewissheit, dass vom Staat nichts mehr kommt. Kurz danach war es aber wieder gefährlicher, weil die Nazis kamen und anfingen, die linken Demonstranten zu verprügeln.

There were a lot of movements in almost all areas. And I very quickly became involved in the student movements of autumn 89. As early as November, if I remember correctly, a free student representation was founded at the university and I was very involved in the organisational side. A year later, I was elected spokesperson for the student council for the whole university.

It was important to us – it was important to me – to create spaces for discourse where students could exchange ideas: What is important for a university? How do we imagine a university? The concepts we wrote at the time were based on parity, i.e. not a professorial majority in all committees, but students, academic staff and professors each having a third of the votes. Together, students and academic staff could have outvoted the professors. But we couldn’t get that through because it wasn’t compatible with the German higher education framework law. Or to keep things at the university that actually worked well in the GDR, such as when a student became a mother or a student became a father. There were special study plans in the GDR that brought pregnancy or a child and studies together – and made it possible to continue studying with a child. We built up equality structures. The term student council, for example, already used the capital “Binnen-I”. What we discuss today as gender-equitable expression – including certain references in language – was already pretty much a matter of course for some students back then. Transport policy, something like the semester ticket or better conditions for cycling, i.e. ecological, climate-friendly behaviour, was also already an issue for us in 1990.