June 2002 - Nr. 6
Wolfgang Thierse – a True Eastern Politician
by James M. Skidmore, University of Waterloo
Wolfgang Thierse is one of the few citizens of the former East Germany to have become a national political figure in reunited Germany. Although without party affiliation during the GDR period, Thierse joined party politics in early 1990 and has been an important voice for eastern Germany ever since. As President of the German Bundestag he has a considerable public profile. What kind of politician is he?
Well, for one thing, he is not a career politician at all. Thierse was born in 1943 in Breslau, but grew up in southern Thuringia. Before moving to Berlin in 1964 to study German literature at Humboldt University, Thierse spent some time in Weimar: as a Catholic who was not a member of the SED (the East German communist party), he was not immediately admitted to university studies, and so he completed an apprenticeship as a typesetter.
Thierse’s democratic principles caused him difficulty in East Germany. In 1976, when the singer Wolf Biermann was deprived of his East German citizenship while on tour in West Germany, Thierse’s opposition to this heavy-handed attempt by the East German authorities to quash Biermann’s criticisms became quickly known, and he ended up losing his job at the Ministry of Culture. This cloud had a silver lining, however, as he was able to find work at the Academy of Sciences’ Central Institute for the History of Literature, an establishment that was less susceptible to the meddling of the Communist Party than was the case at the Ministry of Culture.
Thierse finally joined active political life during the instability and unrest of late 1989 out of the conviction that reunification would be the best guarantee for democratic rights. He became a member of New Forum in October 1989, and in early 1990 he joined the East German Social Democratic Party (SPD), becoming its leader in June of the same year. When, in September 1990, the western and eastern wings combined to form one national party, Thierse was elected deputy chairman of the party, a post he has held ever since.
Outspokenness has been the hallmark of Thierse’s national political activity. As President, or speaker, of the German Bundestag since 1998, Thierse ranks second only to the country’s President in terms of protocol. This unusual feature of the office reflects the desire of the founders of post-Nazi Germany to make parliament a true representative of the people. Thierse has used his position to speak out on topics close to his heart. Not surprisingly, this means focusing on the problems facing eastern Germany. He has become known as the "Mundwerk des Ostens" ("the mouth of the east"), and while his efforts to address directly the incidents of racism and xenophobia that have plagued Germany’s eastern provinces in recent years have earned him praise in some quarters, he is not universally admired for the positions he takes. His remarks in January 2001 about the former East Germany being on the edge of ruin were viewed by many as a direct criticism of Chancellor and SPD-leader Gerhard Schröder’s "politics of optimism." More recently Thierse has argued in his book, Zukunft Ost (Future East) for the development of eastern Germany as a bridge between western and eastern Europe.
There is no doubt that this forthright politician has been able to express the issues of eastern Germany throughout all parts of Germany, and for that he has certainly earned a place in history. But it is still too early to speak of Thierse in historical terms; this is a man with a great deal left to give his country.
