In cooperation with the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC, the Cultural Section of the German Embassy and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Marianne Birthler has been an important public figure in Germany for many years. As the director of the agency for Stasi files (the East German state security service), also respectfully called the Birthler Agency, she embodied the East German civil rights movement's demand that the past of the Stasi and East Germany be thoroughly addressed within the context of a constitutional state. Yet this was not her whole life.
In her memoirs published last year, she described her childhood in Berlin, her life and work in the GDR, her early work in the Protestant Church, and her courageous and tenacious path into the East German civil rights movement. The peaceful revolution and reunification of 1989/90 generated new possibilities for her in politics and civil society: Marianne Birthler became a minister in Brandenburg — and resigned this in protest over the Stasi contacts of Minister President Stolpe. She became the federal chairperson of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, the German Green Party. A reliable and courageous politician, Birthler did not resort to political maneuvering. Her cross-party election to head the agency for the Stasi files was also a consequence of her independence grounded in adherence to her values. 25 years after the German Unification of 1990, Marianne Birthler will present her recollections and her views on German-German history.
The reading will be followed by a commentary from the historian Paul Nolte, one of the leading intellectuals of the Berlin Republic.
Marianne Birthler was the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the Former German Democratic Republic from 2000 to 2011. Before that, she was an important figure in the Protestant church based opposition and the civil rights movement in the GDR. She has held several political offices since unification, including chair ("spokesperson") of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, the German Green Party. In 2011, she was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.
Paul Nolte is Professor for Modern History at the Free University of Berlin. His work focuses on the history of the middle class and German society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As a columnist and journalist, Nolte has reached a broad, public audience for more than 15 years. His collections of essays,Generation Reform (2004) and Riskante Moderne (2006) were hotly debated bestsellers.