Dietmar Keller
Dietmar Keller | |
---|---|
Born | |
Alma mater | KMU |
Occupation | Politician |
Political party | SED PDS |
Spouses |
Dietmar Keller (born 17 March 1942) was an East German politician (SED/PDS) who served as Minister for Culture in the Modrow government. After reunification he sat as a member of the German parliament ("Bundestag") between 1990 and 1994.[1][2][3]
Life
Dietmar Keller was born at the height of the
Dietmar Keller completed his schooling in 1960 and for the next eighteen months undertook his military service in the National People's Army. Between 1962 and 1966 he studied successfully for a teaching qualification in Marxism–Leninism at the Karl Marx University (as it was known between 1953 and 1991) at Leipzig, with a focus on history and journalism.[3] He joined the ruling Socialist Unity Party ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" / SED) in 1963, the year of his twenty-first birthday. He stayed on at Leipzig as a research assistant - later a senior research assistant - between 1966 and 1970.[1]
He received his doctorate in 1969. The work for it involved, in his own words, the study of "problems of the development of economic democracy between 1945 and 1952 in the
In November 1970 he took over as Secretary for Sciences, Humanities and Arts ("Sekretär für Wissenschaft und Kultur") with the
After returning home, in April 1984 he moved from Leipzig to
In March 1990, East Germany underwent its first (and as matters turned out last) free and fair general election. Replaced at the Culture Ministry by Herbert Schirmer , Keller was elected to the East German national parliament ("Volkskammer"), representing the Leipzig electoral district. He served as a member of the parliament's Committees for Germany Unification and was also chair of the parliamentary culture committee.[1][5]
Reunification took place, formally, in October 1990. On 3 October 144 of the 400 former members of the East German Volkskammer became members of a newly enlarged German Bundestag. Of those 144, 24 were members of the PDS (formerly SED), its dominating position in the Volkskammer having been destroyed by the election results seven months earlier. Dietmar Keller was one of the 24 PDS members who transferred from the Volkskammer to the Bundestag in October 1990.[1] A couple of months later General Election was held in which Dietmar Keller was re-elected, now as a "list member" for the Brandenburg electoral district.
He was elected to the important Bundestag enquiry commission, "Evaluation of the History and Consequences of the East German dictatorship ("Aufarbeitung von Geschichte und Folgen der SED-Diktatur")" which began its work in March 1992.[1] His seat on the commission was contested, and fellow members of the PDS Bundestag group elected him in preferences to Uwe-Jens Heuer .[4] Ahead of the 1994 election he renounced his Bundestag membership, but he continued to work with the party group in the Bundestag "on a consultancy basis". Four months after the election he became a personal political assistant to Gregor Gysi, a role in which he continued for eight years till 2002. In addition to producing research papers and analyses, he became a speech writer for Gysi.[6] In December 1996 he married the manager of Gysi's political office, Marlies Deneke.[4] (His previous wife, Gisela Oechelhaeuser, was shortly afterwards unmasked as a Stasi informer ("IM") during the later 1970s, although the information became public only in 1999.[4])
In May 2002 the Kellers decided to end their working relationship with Gregor Gysi. Gysi and Keller had always been political allies, members of the "reforming wing" of the
His political autobiographical volume, In den Mühlen der Ebene. Unzeitgemäße Erinnerungen (loosely "In the mills of government. Untimely memories") appeared in 2011.[4][7]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h Helmut Müller-Enbergs. "Keller, Dietmar (Ps. Arthur Kress) * 17.3.1942 Minister für Kultur". Wer war wer in der DDR?. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin & Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Berlin. Retrieved 16 July 2018.
- ^ a b c d Rainer Pörtner; Rainer Weber; Willi Winkler (15 January 1990). ""Ich habe Lust zu schreiben"". Der Spiegel (online). Retrieved 16 July 2018.
- ^ a b c d e f g Katharina Thehos (2 May 2014). "Kritischer Blick auf die eigene DDR-Vergangenheit". Ringvorlesung "Friedliche Revolution und Demokratie - Perspektiven nach 25 Jahren": Am 6. Mai 2014 referiert Dr. Dietmar Keller, DDR-Kulturminister und Abgeordneter in Volkskammer und Bundestag. Technische Universität Chemnitz (Chemnitz University of Technology). Retrieved 16 July 2018.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Rüdiger Thomas (12 January 2012). "Zwei Kultur-Profile im Selbstporträt". Mit den Autobiografien von Hermann Glaser und Dietmar Keller liegen die Selbstzeugnisse von zwei Personen vor, die zwar beide im Kulturmilieu fest verankert sind, die aber unterschiedlicher – (un-)angepasst – kaum sein könnten. Dennoch wird hier der Versuch eines Vergleichs unternommen. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Bonn. Retrieved 16 July 2018.
- ^ "Dietmar Keller geb. 17. März 1942 Chemnitz". Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg RBB. Retrieved 17 July 2018.
- ^ a b Stefan Berg; Andreas Wassermann (17 April 2000). "Die Machtfrage stellen". Der Spiegel (online). Retrieved 17 July 2018.
- ISBN 9783320022709.