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Roland Geipel (*15 April 1939)

Roland Geipel is a senior pastor of the Lutheran Church in Gera, Thuringia and a civil rights activist in the former East Germany (GDR) who was awarded the German Federal Cross of Merit, one of the highest honours of the Federal Republic of Germany.

As a longtime organizer of peace vigils and social work in Thuringia, during the time of the Communist East Germany Geipel created spaces for social and religious dialogue which were not controlled by the totalitarian state. His theological and social workshops and initiatives became focal points for the resistance against the political regime and the surveillance of the population by the East German Ministry of State Security (‘Stasi’). In 1989 Geipel was one of the main organizers of peaceful demonstrations against the totalitarian regime in Thuringia. The peace rallies contributed to the overthrowing of the East German regime and to German reunification. Geipel has also been involved in the preservation of the natural environment and historical buildings as well as in initiatives for remembering the totalitarian past in Thuringia under the Nazi regime and the East German Communist Party (SED). Since the German unification he has worked for the convergance of social, political and environmental standards in Eastern and Western Europe.

Life and work
Geipel was born on April 15, 1939 in Werdau, Saxony. He grew up with his grandparents and his mother. His father, a distant relative of the composer Robert Schumann, was lost on the German Eastern front during World War II. After finishing school in Werdau, Geipel completed an apprenticeship as a car mechanic. Sporty and musically gifted and a fan of American Bebop and Rock and Roll music which was declared ‘decadent’ by the state, Geipel experienced his first conflicts with the Stasi as an apprentice. In 1957 he escaped East Germany via West Berlin. In West Germany he found work as a car mechanic in Mainz where he also attended evening school, obtaining his university entry qualifications from Carmelite Vocational College and Ketteler College in Mainz. During this time he developed an interest in the life and work of Friedrch v. Bodelschwingh. On a 1965 visit to the GDR, he met and fell in love with his future wife Susanne. Because of her he moved back to the GDR; they married in 1969.

Since his return to Communist East Germany he was under constant observation by the Stasi which in the 1980s tried to sabotage his work as a pastor and tried to destroy his health (‘Zersetzungsmaßnahmen’). After a brief internment in Saasa, Geipel worked at a motor vehicle repair plant in Gera. In September 1969 he commenced his studies of Protestant Theology at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, graduating in 1974. After work as an assistant pastor in Gera-Debschwitz and in Halle-Neusstadt, in 1976 he was ordained as a pastor and became pastor in Gera-Lusan, one of the largest development areas of prefabricated appartments (‘Plattenbaugebiete’) in the Southern GDR. Together with like-minded people in the East German Lutheran church and with ecumenical, West German and international friends, Geipel encouraged free debate about spiritual, social and environmental issues that were marginalized, censored or banned in the GDR. Geipel’s ecclesiastical, social and civil rights activities repeatedly brought him into conflict with the atheist state authorities in the GDR.

Geipel invited critical artists and dissident writers to performances and readings in his church in Gera-Lusan and protected conscientious objectors and alleged ‘anti-social elements’ from state persectution. Artists whom he promoted included Reiner Kunze, Stephan Krawszyk, Bettina Wegner and Freya Klier. Since the early 1980s Geipel pioneered modern forms of worship such as worship with contemporary sacred music and prayers of gratitude and care for creation. In addition, Geipel was engaged in the pastoral care of victims of the Eastern Thuringia uranium mining in Gera’s Wismutkrankenhaus (special hospital for uranium miners). East Thuringinan mines supplied many Warsaw Pact countries with uranium for nuclear power plants and the Soviet nuclear weapon programme; the working conditions (protection) of the uranium miners were poor and their average life expectancy was well below the life expectancy of the general population. Organising mobility and holidays for the disabled, Geipel also supported handicapped communities that received very little or no state support in the former GDR.

Geipel encouraged non-violent protesting of young artists and dissidents against the nuclear arms race in the late Cold War, including protests against the military build-up in Warsaw Pact countries like East Germany where the militarisation of society had reached even the primary school level in the form of military drills (‘Wehrkunde’). In agreement with the aims of the Vancouver Agreement of the World Council of Churches which expressed the conviction that issues of justice, peace, and environmental protection are inextricably related, and that it is the duty of Christians to foster the creation of just, peaceful and sustainable communities around the world, since 1983 Geipel distributed pacifist and environmental literature. Geipel disseminated posters and patches with the slogan ‘beat swords into ploughshares’ (after Micah 4) which were based on a stylized image of a statue by Yevgeny Viktorovich Vuchetich that the Soviet Union had gifted to the United Nations in 1957 and which was erected in front of the United Nations building in New York City. Nonetheless, the East German government considered the display of the peace symbol a provocation against state authorities and the Warsaw Pact; bearers of the peace symbol were arrested and harassed by the Stasi.

In the autumn of 1989, Geipel’s weekly prayers for peace became focal points of the civil rights protests in Gera and East Thuringia. Geipel himself participated in organizing and moderating numerous peace vigils and demonstrations. Accompanied by candles of hope, songs and readings of biblical and poetic texts, the rallies turned into a mass movement with thousands of also non-religious participants joining in.. Peace and protest rallies like those in Leipzig and Gera ushered in the peaceful Revolution of 1989 in the GDR and contributed to the overthrowing of the totalitarian regime, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War.

As a member of the Gera round table (‘Geraer Bürgerkomitee’) in the winter of 1989 and in 1990 Geipel was actively involved in the restructuring of Gera and Thuringia into a democratic society. He showed great personal courage in the disbanding of the Thuringian branch of the State Security (Stasi), including its headquarters in Gera. Intimidated by the demonstrators and armed to the teeth, the Gera Stasi was on the brink of executing a ‘Chinese Solution’, a violent crack-down on the protesters that the Chinese regime had used to stop the protests at the Tienamen Place in Beijing in June 1989. At risk to his own life Geipel prevented the storming of the Gera Stasi headquarters by angry protesters and later negotiated the Stasi’s non-violent retreat and disarmament. Together with other peaceful civil rights activists such as Michael Beleites Geipel managed to confiscate extensive files of the Stasi office before the files could be destroyed by Stasi officers. The civil rights activists also confiscated a huge amount of weapons and ammunition from 22 Gera armouries.

Since 1988 Geipel was subjected to constant surveillance (‘Operative Personenkontrolle’) and spied on by seven members of the Secret Police. When he had a chance to read the files of the Secret Police after the collapse of the East German regime, Geipel found out that several of his close colleagues, including a fellow pastor, a church superintendent and a senior church councillor had been members of the Stasi which had also put enormous pressure on Geipel’s wife Susanne and their daughter. Despite the permanent Stasi surveillance and health issues, his family supported Geipel’s work throughout.

In 1994 Geipel was promoted to the rank of a senior pastor and associate superintendent of the Lutheran Church in Thuringia. In 2004 he retired from his active duties and was awarded the Silver Simson order of the city of Gera. In 2009 he received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany from the hands of Germany’s head of state, Federal President Horst Köhler.

Since his retirement, Geipel has been involved with the ‘Tischlein deck dich - die helfende Hand’-charity which distributes food to the homeless, poor and refugees. Geipel is also as co-founder and supporter of the Amthordurchgang memorial, which was set up in 1997 turning the former detention and torture centre of the Nazi Gestapo, the Soviet NKVD and the East German Stasi in Gera into a memorial and meeting place. Geipel continues to be engaged in the preservation of historical buildings such as old village churches in Thuringia. He is also a member of the German Lutheran church’s Working Party for East-West dialogue (‘Arbeitskreis für Ost-West-Fragen’) which offered him support and encouragement before and during the Peaceful Revolution of 1989 and is presently engaged in dialogical activities activities promoting peace and and mutual understanding between European nations.

The work of Roland Geipel is based on the biblical Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5 - 7) and the eschatological parabels of Jesus (Mt. 25, 31 - 46). His work has also been influenced by Friedrich v. Bodelschwingh, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jochen Klepper, Jürgen Moltmann and Dorothee Sölle. Geipel's work aims at the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of people and giving them an opportunity to engage with religious questions. Geipel believes that humans are co-creators of the divine creator and that they should be enabled to freely express and organize themselves in communal and political affairs. According to Geipel, Christians have an obligations to peacefully resists regimes which try to impose their totalitarian ideology on people or deny them their right to religious, political and creative expression.

Weblinks
https://www.dw.com/en/from-hope-a-movement-the-role-of-churches-in-the-fall-of-the-gdr/a-18035129

Gedenkstätte Amthordurchgang, Thuringia. Memorial for victims of the Nazi, NKVD and Stasi secret polices: https://geschichtsverbund-thueringen.de/mitglieder/gedenkstaette-amthordurchgang-gera-e-v/ (in German)

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/contemporary-european-history/article/abs/popular-discontent-and-political-activism-in-the-gdr/D2D34E42EE082F77B61186856C28621F