User:Nico~enwiki/Erika Steinbach

Erika Steinbach (born July 25, 1943) is a German politician (CDU). She is a member of the parliament (since 1990) elected from the state of Hesse and president of the Federation of Expellees (since 1998). She is also a member of the board of the Goethe-Institut, the national broadcasting company ZDF and the Landsmannschaft Westpreußen.

She was born in Rahmel, West Prussia (now Rumia, Poland) as the daughter of a Luftwaffe officer who was from western Germany and was only stationed there during the war; for this reason some do not consider her an expellee herself.

One of her aims is to build a monumental center against forced migration in Berlin, devoted to the 15 million Germans from Eastern Europe that had to leave their homes in the course of WW2 as well as other victims of ethnic cleansing. She is a representive of the newly founded foundation Center against forced migrations (Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen). This initiative has many enemies, most notably in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Recently, she sued the German journalist Gabriele Lesser for defamations. The questioned article was published September 19, 2003, in the daily Kieler Nachrichten.