Thomas Kretschmer: Difference between revisions

Before and during [[Die Wende|1989]] he was a Christian [[Activism|civil rights activist]] and pacifist who received disproportionate attention from the [[Stasi|security services]] over many years. At various points between 1973 and 1985 he was held as a [[political prisoner]] in the [[German Democratic Republic]].<ref name=BiographischeDatenbankenTK>{{cite web |url=http://bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de/wer-war-wer-in-der-ddr-%2363%3B-1424.html?ID=1903|author2=|author1=Christian Halbrock|title=Kretschmer, Thomas * 18.12.1955 Bürgerrechtler|publisher= Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur: Biographische Datenbanken |language= German| accessdate= 19 June 2015}}</ref>

Kretschmer was born in [[Dornburg]], a small hilltop town some 12&nbsp;km (7 miles) northeast of [[Jena]]. His father was a biologist: his mother was an education specialist. He grew up in a [[Catholic]] family and in 1970, at the age of 14 refused to participate in a [[Jugendweihe]], a secular "coming of age" ceremony which in the German Democratic Republic had some of the features of a [[Confirmation|church confirmation]]. He started a professional trade apprenticeship in 1970, but was excluded from further training or schooling in 1972 after he left the [[Free German Youth|Young Communists (FDJ / ''Freie Deutsche Jugend'')]] and announced his refusal to undertake [[military service]] with the [[National People's Army]]:<ref name=JugoppTK>{{cite web|url=http://www.jugendopposition.de/index.php?id=2005|title= Kretschmer, Thomas|work=DDR-Opposition|publisher=Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung & Robert-Havemann-Gesellschaft e.V. (jugend opposition in der DDR)|accessdate=19 June 2015}}</ref> the [[German Democratic Republic]] made no accommodation for [[Conscientious objector]]s. At the end of a turbulent year he was able to start a new traineeship, as a care assistant at the city hospital in [[Jena]].

In June 1973 Kretschmer, still aged only 17, attempted to escape from East Germany, "in order to avoid military service" (''"um sich dem Wehrdienst zu entziehen"'').<ref name=BiographischeDatenbankenTK/> Human losses during World War II, exacerbated by a steady stream of migration to the west during the 1950s, had left the country desperately short of working age population, and after 1961 there were effective measures in place to prohibit and prevent emigration. Kretschmer hitchhiked via [[Dresden]] to the border with [[Czechoslovakia]] which he was able to cross, and continued on his way towards [[Austria]].<ref name=VluchtuswlautTK>{{cite journal|title=Wie Diktaturen Leben prägen: Thomas Kretschmer, Fahnenflüchtiger|author1=Inge Kurtz|author2= Thomas Kretschmer as interviewee|publisher=Hessischer Rundfunk: hr2-kultur |date=16 November 2012|work=radio interview transcript}}</ref> However, 500 meters short of the border dividing Czechoslovakia from Austria he was caught by Czechoslovak soldiers, blindfolded, placed on the back seat of a jeep like vehicle next to a large dog whose noisy panting and odour he would remember long afterwards, and returned to the [[German Democratic Republic]].<ref name=StasilautTMinSpiegel0498>{{cite web|volume=15/1998|url=http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-7859034.html|title=Warum ausgerechnet ich? .... In der DDR gab es nicht nur 600 000 Stasi-Spitzel, sondern auch Zehntausende aufrechter Bürger, die sich geweigert haben, andere zu denunzieren - stille Helden, über die kaum einer spricht.|publisher=[[Der Spiegel]] (online)|date=6 April 1998|accessdate=20 June 2015}}</ref> The district court in [[Jena]] sentenced him to a fifteen-month jail term for [[Republikflucht|attempting illegal emigration]].<ref name=BiographischeDatenbankenTK/> During his incarceration in the {{Interlanguage link multi|Ichtershausen Youth Correction Facility|de|3=Jugendstrafanstalt Ichtershausen}} he was repeatedly interrogated and pressured by officers from the [[Stasi|Ministry for State Security]]. Kretschmer was persuaded to sign a declaration in which he undertook to [[Informal collaborators (East Germany)|collaborate]] with Stasi. Kretschmer had been identified as a committed [[Catholic]] with good contacts among the youth community: he had told his interrogators that he wanted to become a priest.<ref name=StasilautTMinSpiegel0498/> He appears in Stasi records as "Agent Kaplain", along with a note by his handler that he was of "above average intelligence".<ref name=StasilautTMinSpiegel0498/> Unusually, however, he had a change of heart a few days after his recruitment and wrote to his [[Agent handling|handler]] withdrawing the undertaking to collaborate. He was nevertheless released in 1974 at the end of his fifteen-month sentence. The Stasi continued, without success, to try and persuade him to collaborate with them.<ref name=StasilautTMinSpiegel0498/>

From 1974 Kretschmer engaged actively in evangelical youth work in Jena. Between 1974 and 1976 he worked as a care assistant at the city hospital in Jena, and in a residential institution for the handicapped at the nearby health resort of [[Bad Blankenburg]], while also remaining active in the local "alternative youth scene".<ref name=BiographischeDatenbankenTK/> In 1976 he began to study for the priesthood at the [[Erfurt]] {{Interlanguage link multi|priest seminary|de|3=Predigerseminar}}.<ref name=GeraChronTK/> He then married and relocated to nearby [[Apfelstädt (Nesse-Apfelstädt)|Apfelstädt]].<ref name=GeraChronTK>{{cite web|url=http://www.gera-chronik.de/www/gerahistorie/chronik/neueartikel/details.htm?id=13D8F7FB167|title=18.12.1955 Thomas Kretschmer geboren|publisher=Gera Chronik|accessdate=21 June 2015}}</ref> In 1980 he was prevented from undertaking further studies for the priesthood by the {{Interlanguage link multi|official church|de|3=Amtskirche}} in [[Thuringia]]. Other sources state that he had already, in 1979, withdrawn for personal reasons.<ref name=GeraChronTK/> In either case, in November 1980 he again found himself summoned to perform his [[military service]] and, when he refused the call, arrested.<ref name=GeraChronTK/> In December 1980 his conscription was [[Probation|conditionally suspended]] and he was instead called up to serve as a [[Construction soldier|Construction soldier ("''Bausoldat''")]].<ref name=GeraChronTK/>

The new [[Construction soldier|Construction soldier ("''Bausoldat''")]] system provided the state with a solution to the challenge presented by [[Conscientious objection in East Germany|Conscientious objection]], but it also offered a de facto finishing school for principled activists and pacifists. Kretschmer developed an affinity with the [[Solidarity (Polish trade union)|Solidarity Movement]] in neighbouring [[Poland]], and demonstrated his support at the start of 1982 with a [[Saint Sylvester's Day|New Year's]] [[Batik]] which he designed, created, and distributed to his friends. It displayed the brief but, in the context of the times, politically powerful injunction, "Learn Polish!" (''"Lernt polnisch!"'').<ref name=TKBatik>{{cite web|url=http://www.havemann-gesellschaft.de/index.php?id=392|title=Lernt polnisch!|author=Thomas Kretschmer| publisher= Robert-Havemann-Gesellschaft e.V., Berlin|date=December 1981|accessdate=21 June 2015}}</ref> His seasonal greeting was intercepted by the [[Intelligence collection management|censors]] and he was arrested in January 1982, spending the next six months being looked after by the [[Stasi|Ministry for State Security]] at their [[Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial|Main Interrogation Centre]] in [[Berlin]].<ref name=BiographischeDatenbankenTK/>

In August 1982 a military high court in [[Halle (Saale)|Halle]] condemned Kretschmer under sections §214, §245 and §246 of the criminal code for "activity affecting the state" and "public disrespect". He was sentenced to four and a half years in prison, some of which he would spend in the country's only military prison, at Schwendt. Later it became known that Kretschmer's defence attorney for this trial was a [[Informal collaborators (East Germany)|Stasi collaborator]] who had been providing reports on his client to the [[Stasi|Ministry]].<ref name=TKBatik/> At the time of Kretschmer's imprisonment in the {{Interlanguage link multi|Schwedt Military Prison|de|3=Militärgefängnis Schwedt}} his wife and four young children were unprovided for. He was one of several inmates at the establishment who came to the attention of the international [[London|London-based]] human rights organisation, [[Amnesty International]]: they sent his wife an hundred British pounds for the family's basic living costs.<ref name="mihr">Anja Mihr, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=pslPpOCasZIC&pg=PA214&lpg=PA214&dq=Thomas+Kretschmer+DDR&source=bl&ots=B71nD1i-fI&sig=XQ95EWL2LIUjPaGQjc1zPbQzMz4&hl=de&sa=X&ei=-JiOUaqjMseDtAbNuICgDA&ved=0CDkQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=Thomas%20Kretschmer%20DDR&f=false Amnesty International in der DDR.: Der Einsatz für Menschenrechte im Visier der Stasi]'', Ch. Links Verlag, 2002, Seiten 214, 215</ref>

In January 1985 Kretschmer was transferred to the Stasi detention centre at [[Chemnitz|Karl-Marx-Stadt (as Chemnitz was then called)]] in preparation for his release to [[West Germany]]. Kretschmer refused to go to West Germany. His case was taken up by [[Kurt Scharf|Archbishop Kurt Scharf]], [[Werner Leich|Bishop Werner Leich]], and by church organisations more generally, along with [[Amnesty International]] who nominated him their "prisoner of the year".<ref name=GeraChronTK/> In July 1985 Kretschmer, who had by this time been transferred to [[Leipzig]], was released. He now worked, till 1989, as a church manual craftsman in [[:de:Ebersdorf (Saalburg-Ebersdorf)|Ebersdorf]].<ref name=BiographischeDatenbankenTK/>

The [[fall of the Berlin Wall]] in November 1989, and the ensuing evidence that [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] had issued no orders to [[Group of Soviet Forces in Germany|the military]] for the violent suppression of the burgeoning revolution, opened the way for a succession of events that would lead to the demise, as a standalone one-party dictatorship of the German Democratic Republic and, in October 1990, [[German reunification]]. In regional [[Stasi]] establishments across the country one feature of the [[Peaceful revolution]] was a desperate scramble to destroy the paper records that the Stasi had built up and safeguarded during nearly four decades. Protestors rushed across the country to prevent the destruction of the Stasi records, with varying degrees of success. Kretsschmer participated in the occupation of the Stasi regional office at the town of [[Bad Lobenstein]] and he was a member of the Thuringian Citizens' Committee for Resolving Stasi issues (''"thüringischen Bürgerkomitee zur Auflösung des MfS"''). He participated in local politics as a member of the Bad Lobenstein "Ecclesiastical Electorate Community" (''"Kirchliche Wählergemeinschaft"'').<ref name=BiographischeDatenbankenTK/>

As of 2015, Krestschmer lives quietly as a wood carver in [[Tegau]]. He also worked from 2001 in a specialist clinic in [[Stadtroda]] with physically handicapped patients.<ref name=TKportraitusw/>