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| '''{{Audio|De-Erika Steinbach.ogg|Erika Steinbach}}''' (born July 25, 1943 in what was then ], ]) is a ] conservative ] who has been representing the ] (CDU) and the ] as a member of the ] of Germany, the ], since 1990. She is one of two candidates elected directly from ], and is the spokeswoman of the ] parliamentary group on ] and ]. She is also a member of the national board of the CDU. Since 1998, she is the president of the ]. Erika Steinbach studied music and was a member of concert orchestras before becoming a politician. | '''{{Audio|De-Erika Steinbach.ogg|Erika Steinbach}}''' (born July 25, 1943 in what was then ] in ], ]) is a ] conservative ] who has been representing the ] (CDU) and the ] as a member of the ] of Germany, the ], since 1990. She is one of two candidates elected directly from ], and is the spokeswoman of the ] parliamentary group on ] and ]. She is also a member of the national board of the CDU. Since 1998, she is the president of the ]. Erika Steinbach studied music and was a member of concert orchestras before becoming a politician. | ||
| ==Offices== | ==Offices== | ||
Revision as of 06:49, 17 October 2009
Erika Steinbach (born July 25, 1943 in what was then Rahmel in Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia, Nazi Germany) is a German conservative politician who has been representing the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the state of Hesse as a member of the Parliament of Germany, the Bundestag, since 1990. She is one of two candidates elected directly from Frankfurt, and is the spokeswoman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group on human rights and humanitarian aid. She is also a member of the national board of the CDU. Since 1998, she is the president of the Federation of Expellees. Erika Steinbach studied music and was a member of concert orchestras before becoming a politician.
Offices
Steinbach was elected president of the Federation of Expellees (Template:Lang-de) in 1998, succeeding Fritz Wittmann. Since 2000, she has been a member of the national board of the CDU (German, CDU-Bundesvorstand). In addition, she is on the boards of the Goethe-Institut, the national broadcasting company ZDF, and the Territorial Association of West Prussia. She also is chairwoman of the Centre Against Expulsions.
Since 2005, she has been a member of the German parliamentary committee for human rights and humanitarian aid and spokesperson for human rights and humanitarian aid of the CDU/Christian Social Union fraction.
Biography and career
Steinbach's father, Wilhelm Karl Hermann, was born in Hanau (Hesse, western-central Germany) but his family had come from Lower Silesia. In 1941 after the German invasion of Poland, he was deployed to the town of Rumia (Template:Lang-de), since 1919 part of the Polish Corridor and in 1939 annexed by Nazi Germany. Wilhelm Karl Hermann served there as an airfield technician with the rank of a Luftwaffe Feldwebel. Steinbach's mother, Erika Hermann (née Grote), was ordered to work in the town after the annexation. Steinbach was born there as Erika Hermann.
In January 1944, her father was deployed to the Eastern Front. In January 1945 during East Prussian Offensive of the Soviet Army, Steinbach's mother together with her children, fled to Schleswig-Holstein in northwestern Germany. In 1948 the family moved to Berlin, where Steinbach's grandfather had become mayor of one of the districts.
In 1949, Wilhelm Karl Hermann returned from Soviet captivity. In 1950, the family moved to Hanau, Hesse where Steinbach finished her education and started studying the violin. In 1967 she abandoned her music career due to an ill finger. In 1972, she married Helmut Steinbach, the conductor of a local youth symphonic orchestra. Steinbach graduated from a school of civil administration and moved to Frankfurt, where she started working for a Communal Evaluation Office.
In 1974 she joined the Frankfurt branch of the CDU party. In 1977 she was elected a chairman of the city council and held that post until 1990, when she was elected a member of the Bundestag. In that year she voted against the confirmation of German-Polish borders. In 1997 she criticised the approval of the Czech-German Declaration of Reconciliation.
Federation of Expellees
Steinbach joined the German Federation of Expellees in 1994. In May 1998 she became the head of the organization, and was re-elected in 2002 and on May 8, 2004
The German Federal Expellee Law of 1953 defines as expellee all German nationals and ethnic Germans with a primary residence outside post-war Germany, who lost this residence in the course of the World War II-related flight and expulsions.
Centre Against Expulsions
Currently she campaigns for the planned museum Centre Against Expulsions (Template:Lang-de) for the victims of "Flight, displacements, forced resettlements and deportations all over the world in the past century", a project of the German federal government on initiative and with participation of the Federation of Expellees. The museum will contain a permanent exhibition to document expulsions including the expulsion of Germans after World War II.
Political positions
Steinbach has defined her political positions regarding issues related to the expulsion of Germans as follows: She says that the expulsions are not comparable to the Holocaust, which she says is a unique crime. She further says that it was Adolf Hitler who opened Pandora's box and thus the German expellees are also victims of Hitler's policies, though she does not endorse the thesis of primary responsibility of the Nazis for the expulsions. She renounces claims of the Federation of Expellees to Poland and distanced herself from the Prussian Trust. She endorses the Charta of the German expellees of August 1950.
Perception
Erika Steinbach is much more widely known in Poland and the Czech Republic than in Germany. According to Cordell and Wolff (2005), the political importance the Federation of Expellees has in German politics is overestimated in Poland and the Czech Republic because of its unproportional media presence in these countries and campaigns of "aggressively nationalist politicians".
Criticism in Poland
Steinbach's position as head of the Federation of Expellees arouses much controversy in Poland, as has the Center Against Expulsions. Polish and the Czech politicians have warned the memorial could put the Germans' suffering on a par with that of the Nazis' victims. Polish Ambassador to Germany Marek Prawda questioned the entire project: It's difficult to take just one section out of the chain of human catastrophes of World War II and make this the basis of a European recollection, he said.
Steinbach's public pronouncements have been criticized for causing a deterioration in German-Polish relations due to stirring up controversy regarding the rights of Germans who were expelled from former German territories which became Polish following the Nazi defeat in 1945.
A 2003 cover montage of Polish newsmagazine Wprost that depicted Steinbach riding Chancellor Gerhard Schröder while wearing an SS uniform. In 2007 Gazeta Wyborcza, a popular newspaper in Poland, reproduced a leaflet presenting Steinbach in the succession of the Teutonic Knights and the Nazis, and reminded of the full compensations never paid to Poland for losses caused by the Nazi Germany.
In 2006 she was involved in a controversial exhibition on the expulsions in Europe in the 20th century. The exhibition was criticized by some already before it opened. The exhibition does explicitly mention the invasion of Poland and Nazis crimes as major part of the reason for the undifferentiated expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe. To a lower extent it mentions the expulsions of Armenians, Poles, Turks, Greeks, Latvians, Karelians, Ukrainians, Italians and other peoples - topics many Europeans are unfamiliar with. The last item of the exhibition was a reconciliatory suitcase from Poland dedicated to a peaceful Polish, German and Ukrainian future generation. A group of Polish victims of Nazis visited the exhibition and pointed out that neither Death Marches nor the massacre and expulsion of Warsaw civilians were even mentioned .
Poland long opposed plans to set up the center, but gave in after being assured that, in addition to a permanent exhibit on the displaced Germans, it would also include information on expulsions of other peoples throughout history and around the globe.
Władysław Bartoszewski, an Auschwitz survivor who is Poland’s commissioner on relations with Germany, said that giving Mrs Steinbach a seat on the board would be akin to the Vatican appointing a Holocaust denier like Richard Williamson to manage relations with Israel.
The Polish foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, privately warned Berlin that allowing Mrs Steinbach’s appointment would shake German-Polish relations “to their foundations”. Do people whose families lived there for generations want to be identified with a person like Mrs. Steinbach, who came to our country with Hitler and had to leave it with Hitler too ? Sikorski said in Brussels on Feb. 23 2009, referring to Steinbach’s father having moved to German occupied Poland during the war and asked her to follow the example of President Horst Köhler, who was born within family of wartime German settlers in Poland and never considered himself an expellee. The fact that Steinbach represents a person born due to Nazi German occupation of Poland is the basis of controversy for Poles.
In a response, the Federation of Expellees stated: "Poland suffered much at the hands of Germans. We Germans are aware of this responsibility. But finding a common path to the future is only possible if all those who suffered climb out of the trenches of history and seek understanding".
On 4 March 2009 the Federation of Expellees decided not to nominate Steinbach to the council and instead left one seat unoccupied.
Lecture controversy
In May 2008 Steinbach started a series of lectures about the "German settlement in Eastern Central Europe" at the University of Potsdam. However, the persisting obstructions of some students who protested against Steinbach's allegedly revisionist view on German history by throwing waterfilled balloons and blocking the entrances compelled her to cancel the further lectures. On June 11, 2008 a full meeting of the students council decided (with 146 against 7 votes) to protect the right of freedom of opinion and speech and invited Steinbach again, if necessary under police protection. The local Mayor, supported by several political parties, expressed his displeasure about the incident and requested the university council to invite Steinbach again.
Honours
On July 9, 2009 she was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit by Prime Minister of Bavaria Horst Seehofer.
External links
- Template:De icon Bundestag biography
- Template:De icon Federation of Expellees
- Centre Against Expulsions
- The Warsaw Voice newspaper article, "Border Dispute", 2003
- Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty article about Centre Against Expulsions, 2003
References
- Template:De icon"Erika Steinbach bestreitet Sinneswandel". Die Welt. Retrieved 2005-11-03.
- ^ Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg online
- Template:Pl icon Szubarczyk, Piotr (2004). "Erika z Rumi". Biuletyn IPN. 50 (4): 49–53.
{{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help); Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ n-tv
- Template:De icon"BdV-Präsidentin Erika Steinbach mit überwältigender Mehrheit wiedergewählt". Bund der Vertriebenen website. BdV. 2004. Retrieved May 8 2004.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|dateformat=ignored (help) - Template:De icon Bundestag (1953). "Gesetz über die Angelegenheiten der Vertriebenen und Flüchtlinge". Juris.de. German Ministry of Justice. Retrieved February 28 2005.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|dateformat=ignored (help) - Centre against Expulsions
- ^ Giordano, Ralph. "Erika Steinbach ist keine Revanchistin". Hamburger Abendblatt 2009-02-27. Retrieved 2009-08-25.
- ^ Cordell, Karl; Wolff, Stefan (2005). Routledge advances in European politics. Volume 28. Germany's foreign policy towards Poland and the Czech Republic: Ostpolitik revisited. Routledge. p. 149. ISBN 0415369746. Retrieved 2009-08-25.
- ^ http://www.expatica.com/nl/news/news_focus/Poland-ups-the-pressure-in-WWII-memorial-feud-with-Germany--_49974.html
- http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4057645,00.html
- http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/257623,refugee-museum-dispute-looms-ahead-of-german-polish-state-meeting.html
- polish leaflet of 2007
- http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/issuedetails.aspx?issueid=ea5cd0b7-e759-445d-a85e-268a8f4415bc&articleId=80eb3e50-fa12-4da7-b2c7-b8f680bae54c
- http://remember.org/educate/dingell.html
- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29411189/
- ^ http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090223/FOREIGN/422245904/1013/NEWS
- http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=aVlnY6l646Ag&refer=germany
- http://wyborcza.pl/1,86871,6315910,Erika_Steinbach_Reconciles.html
- http://www.rp.pl/artykul/9133,269112_Semka__Polska___Niemcy__Czas_niezrozumienia_.html
- Spiegel.de, Vertriebenenbund zieht Steinbachs Nominierung zurück
- Die Welt, Steinbach sagt Vortraege ab
- Spiegel, Studium abgesagt
- Märkische Allgemeine, Oberbürgermeister fordert Universität auf sich dem Konflikt zu stellen
- http://www.bayern.de/Fotoreihen-.1589.10261791/index.htm
