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Heinrich George | Helmut Kind | Karl Heinrich | Ewald Ernst | Kurt Müller | Alfred Weiland | Arno Wend | Helmut Brandt | Georg Dertinger | Max Fechner | Karl Wilhelm Fricke | Wolfgang Harich | Walter Janka | Walter Linse | Paul Merker | Sigrid Paul | Rudolf Bahro | Heinz Brandt | Jürgen Fuchs | Gerulf Pannach | Michael Sallmann | Hans-Joachim Helwig-Wilson | Bärbel Bohley | Freya Klier | Stephan Krawczyk | Vera Lengsfeld | Ulrike Poppe
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 Bärbel Bohley was one of the leading personalities of the peaceful revolution in East Germany in autumn 1989. Born in Berlin in 1945, she studied painting from 1969 to 1974 at the Art Academy in Berlin-Weißensee. As a freelance artist Bohley created lots of exhibitions at home and abroad. In 1982 she co-founded the SED critical group "Women for Peace,", which belonged to the independent peace movement in the GDR. Because of her commitment against the new Military Service Law of the GDR, which committed women to military duties, she was excluded from the Berlin District Board of the Association of Visual Artists (VBK) in 1983. The Ministry for State Security (Stasi) observed her in the operative prodcedure "Bohle". In November 1983 she was arrested together with Ulrike Poppe, on charges of alleged "treasonable communication.". Due to international protests she was released without trial after six weeks of detention in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen in January 1984. In 1985 she founded with other civil rights activists of the GDR, the SED's critical "Initiative for Peace and Human Rights". In January 1988 the Stasi arrested several participants of a demonstration for the 1918 official assassinated Communist leader Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg because they possessed unauthorized banners - Bärbel Bohley protested against this action and was subsequently arrested. She was deported with a temporary visa for six months to the UK. After lengthy negotiations she re-entered the GDR in the summer of 1989 and initiated the founding of the "New Forum", an independent coalition movement, which called for a democratization of the GDR. After the fall of the communist dictatorship, she joined various political committees and organizations for grassroots politics and criticized the transformation of the civil rights movements to traditional parties. In 1991 she retired from active politics and worked, among others, as a representatives of the European Union in Sarajevo. In 1996 Bohley participated in the founding of the Citizen’s Office for the processing of subsequent damage from the SED dictatorship” and was their chairwomen from 2006. Bärbel Bohley died in 2010. |
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