Hildigund Neubert (born Hildigund Falcke) is a German politician. At the time of East Germany's "peaceful revolution" she was a member of Demokratischer Aufbruch (DA, "Democratic Awakening"), one of the political organisations that advocated for democracy and helped bring about the 1990 East German general election.
After reunification she remained active on the centre-right of German politics.
Life and works Early life and education
Hildigund Falcke was born in Quedlinburg. Her father is the Evangelical theologian Heino Falcke. She grew up in Gnadau, a village to the north of Quedlinburg. Unlike in most other towns in the German Democratic Republic, Christian belief and engagement was mainstream in Gnadau.
Her mother, Almuth Falcke, had trained and qualified as a nurse. The Falcke children enjoyed a varied musical education and were encouraged to read extensively. Heino Falcke's standing as a theologian and church minister meant that the family were less isolated from western Christendom than most East German children. Hildigund became familiar with the children's books of Erich Kästner, James Krüss and Astrid Lindgren. Both Heino and Almuth Falcke had lived in the West in the past, but during the 1950s they had moved to the GDR to spread and support Christian beliefs.
Because of her father's influential position in the church community she was accepted for admission to the Extended Secondary School in Erfurt when she was thirteen, and permitted to sit for the Abitur (school final exams), which she passed in 1979. She would have liked to study foreign languages, but her background meant that she would never be considered for any job that came with foreign travel privileges, so that there was no question of her being permitted to study foreign languages through the East German education system. Instead she focused on music, and she passed the entrance exam of the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Weimar.
She studied at the academy between 1979 and 1984 and met Ehrhart Neubert, who was working at the academy as part-time student chaplain. He was also employed at the time as a parish priest and was emerging as a leading figure in the East German peace movement. Hildigund and Ehrhart Neubert married in 1987 and moved to Berlin the same year.
Berlin
In Berlin they lived in a relatively small first-floor apartment by a busy road junction with its own set of traffic lights. Hildigund Neubert's first impression of Berlin was that it was, after Weimar, noisy, cold and dirty. (She and her husband already had two small children two care for.) The "Democracy Now" citizens' movement was also a more obvious reality in Berlin than in Weimar. Two weeks after the young family moved into their little apartment the so-called "Environment Library" at the nearby Church of Zion ("Zionskirche") was stormed by the security services. The Church of Zion was a well-known meeting centre for people engaged with the pro-democracy church-based political reform movement ("Kirche von Unten") and the raid was accompanied by arrests. Neubert hurried over with the babies' pram filled with thermos flasks of hot tea to try and help.
Ehrhart Neubert had many friends and contacts in the citizens' movement: many of its Berlin-based protagonists, such as Bärbel Bohley, Rainer Eppelmann, Rudi Pahnke, Hans-Jochen Tschiche and Edelbert Richter, became regular visitors to the couple's home. The conversations between the friends reflected an awareness of the growing signs of the social and political crisis that was developing in East Germany, still large unreported in the west. Reflecting the church connections of those involved, there was earnest discussion of prayers for peace, and of the growing demand for citizens to be permitted to travel abroad. There was also an effective informal news network: arrests of democracy activists quickly became common knowledge.
Demokratischer Aufbruch
As the Neuberts returned from a holiday in Saxony they stopped off in Dresden and met up with some of the democracy activists there. At that meeting the establishment of Demokratischer Aufbruch (DA, "Democratic Awakening") was agreed. One of those invited to the movement's inaugural meetings was Wolfgang Schnur who at that time, with his legal training and experience, was seen by many of the activists as a natural leader. Schnur was a close confidant of the respected pastor Horst Kasner A few months later Schnur would be unmasked as a long-standing Stasi spy. Kasner became better known to commentators after his daughter became Germany's chancellor (head of government) in 2005.
The meeting for the foundation of DA was to take place on 1 October 1989 at the Neuberts' apartment, which was conveniently located near to the Alexanderplatz. Ehrhart was among those who would address the meeting: the couple were acutely aware of the danger in which they were placing themselves. By now there were three children, so consideration had to be given to what would happen to the children if their parents were both arrested. In the end they drafted a written power of attorney to be granted to Ehrhart's oldest daughter (from an earlier liaison) providing detailed instructions for taking care of each of the children. This document was carefully concealed inside the piano.
The meeting was scheduled for the afternoon. In 1989 the first of October fell on a Sunday, so all the anticipated participants would be in church for the service and the lunch that followed. When people started to leave they found Rainer Eppelmann waiting outside, and to each of the chosen few he whispered that they should come to the Neuberts' apartment at 15.00. At the time appointed Hildigund's father were already there. The others had only just started to arrive when a police minibus turned up and parked directly outside. After that no more people could be let in to the meeting, but 17 had nevertheless managed to get in before the arrival of the police surveillance team. Hildigund had already left the apartment with the children, so missed the opening hours of the meeting, but when she returned at around half past nine in the evening, the apartment was still full of people, and the "foundation congress" of Demokratischer Aufbruch (DA) was still in full swing. Over the next few days the Neuberts' apartment was the headquarters, the hotel, and by day the main office of DA. There was constant discussion (and eating). Political leaflets were prepared and laboriously copied onto the waxed paper for use on the copying machine. By this time events on the streets were moving fast, and often by the time leaflets were ready for distribution, the news they contained was often out of date. In the kitchen the radio played constantly, while main meals were generally consumed with at least six extra people round the table. Only the largest cooking pots were used for meal preparation. Meanwhile, the children played in their room. The three-year-old could be heard from time to time excitedly calling out something along the lines of, "...without Edon Denz, in time for next year's Lent", only to be corrected, in respect of the name of the party first secretary, by the five-year-old.
A few days later, on 9 October 1989 news came through that a mass pro-democracy demonstration in Leipzig had passed off without bloodshed. Evidently the security services had received no instructions to use "such means might be necessary" to prevent or terminate what turned out to be the first in a series of pro-democracy "Monday demonstrations". Over the next couple of weeks, bolstered by the moral authority of the church and (mostly "below the radar") organisational skills of church leaders, mass demonstrations calling for an end to the one-party dictatorship proliferated. On 4 November the Alexanderplatz demonstration, close to the Neuberts' home in north-central Berlin, is believed to have attracted between half a million and a million protestors. Again, there was huge relief at the absence of bloodshed. First Secretary Honecker had resigned a couple of weeks earlier, responding to a rising tide of pro-democracy street demonstrations and his own increasingly serious medical condition: leadership of the government had passed to Egon Krenz. It was clear, that without the certainty of intervention on the streets by the Soviet forces based in the country, East Germany's government could see no clear way to save their dictatorship using their tried and tested methods. For hundreds of thousands of supporters of the citizens' movement who believed in something better for the country, including Hildigund Neubert, it was immediately clear after the events of 4 November 1989 that the "German Democratic Republic", as it had hitherto existed, was finished. She later recalled an immense and sustained sense of relief that from now on people would be able to read, write and say/listen to whatever they liked. They could meet up with whom they wished without being afraid that they might unknowingly be talking to an "Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter(in)" who would later solemnly write down and report their conversation to the security services. The Neuberts' children could look forward to a "future ... [lived] in freedom".
The night the wall was breached
9 November 1989 was an important day because it marked the day after the first birthday of Wilhelm, the Neuberts' third (and at the time youngest) child. They remembered the anniversary only the day after it fell, and they hastily improvised an ad hoc ceremony involving a candle, a quick blessing, a hymn and a not quite random present that had been acquired some months earlier. That evening news came through on the radio in the kitchen (tuned to a West German news report) that in East Berlin protesters had breached the wall. There had been no serious attempt by the uniformed border guards and other security service personnel present to prevent the development, and Soviet soldiers looking on made no move. As usual, that evening the Neuberts were entertaining visitors to a meal: on this occasion guests included some "reform communists" from France. Their foreign visitors were convinced that the grapevine reports picked up by the western radio station could not possibly be true. While their German guests slipped off to make their way to the wall and investigate further, the Frenchmen stayed on, determined to pursue the serious discussion they were having at table about the possibility of a future communism with a human face. The Neuberts were therefore not present that evening as the gap in the Berlin Wall was breached and then enlarged so that incredulous East Berliners could pour through, most of them at this stage simply curious to find out how things looked on the other side. It was several days later, having accepted an invitation to give an interview to Radio Glasnost, that Hildigund Neubert undertook her own first visit to West Berlin.
Preparations for a democratic future