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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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 In the 1980s, Ulrike Poppe was one of the leading figures in the grass-roots civil rights movement in the GDR. Ulrike Poppe was born in 1953 in Rostock and grew up in Hohen-Neuendorf, near Berlin. She started studying at Berlin's Humboldt University to become a teacher for art and history, but left in 1973 without completing her degree. For a time she worked as a helper in a children's home and in the Psychiatric Clinic at the Charité University Hospital until, in 1976, she obtained a post as an assistant at the German History Museum. In the 1980s, since she was active in key areas of opposition in East Berlin, the GDR's capital, she suffered a whole series of "demoralisation measures" instigated by the Ministry of State Security (MfS). In 1980, she got together with a small group of like-minded friends to open the first independent kindergarten in East Berlin. In 1982 she co-founded the "Frauen für den Frieden" (Women for Peace) group and launched a series of protest actions against the GDR's new conscription laws. At the end of 1983, the MfS arrested Ulrike Poppe together with Bärbel Bohley, charging them with "treasonable communication". They were both taken to the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen remand prison. These MfS detentions triggered a massive wave of protests in the GDR and abroad, which led to the two women being released only six weeks later. From 1985, Ulrike Poppe was involved in the "Initiative Frieden und Menschenrechte" (Initiative for Peace and Human Rights), an organisation critical of the SED regime. In September 1989, she was one of the first to sign the petition calling for the founding of the "Demokratie Jetzt" (Democracy Now (DJ)) civil rights movement and she represented this group in the main negotiations leading to the first free elections for the Volkskammer, the East German parliament, in March 1990. Until 1991 she was a member of the "Demokratie Jetzt" representatives' council, which played a key role in the peaceful revolution of autumn 1989. Since January 1991 she has been the Director of Studies at the Evangelical Academy Berlin-Brandenburg, and in this role has been especially active in moves to assess the implications of GDR history. She is a member of the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial Advisory Board. |
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