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| In 2011 Steinbach visited Poland for the third time, where she laid a floral wreath at the commemoral site of the victims of Nazism in ], and visited a church of Gdynia, where German expellee victims are commemorated. | In 2011 Steinbach visited Poland for the third time, where she laid a floral wreath at the commemoral site of the victims of Nazism in ], and visited a church of Gdynia, where German expellee victims are commemorated. | ||
| In Germany the Polish criticism is considered to be part of an anti-German campaign in which Steinbach became the enemy stereotype<ref> ], 1 March 2009 {{de icon}}</ref> and demonization of Steinbach a kind of reason of state.<ref name=sued> ], 8 January 2010</ref> The way she is portrayed in Polish public is described as having rather "hysteric features"<ref> ], 24 February 2009 {{de icon}}</ref> or a "psychosis".<ref> ] 3 March 2009 {{de icon}}</ref> | |||
| − Especially conservative nationalists in the ] are blamed to have used her as a bogey in internal politics to counter ]<ref> ], 25 February 2009 {{de icon}}</ref> ignoring Steinbach's real views.<ref name=sued/> | |||
| ===Lecture controversy=== | ===Lecture controversy=== | ||
Revision as of 07:54, 16 January 2012
| Erika Steinbach | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Member of Parliament for Frankfurt am Main | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Erika Hermann (1943-07-25) 25 July 1943 (age 81) |
| Nationality | German |
| Political party | Christian Democratic Union |
| Committees | Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid (since 2005) |
| Website | http://www.erika-steinbach.de |
Erika Steinbach (born 25 July 1943) is a German conservative politician and president of the Federation of Expellees. She 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 MPs representing the constituency of Frankfurt, and she was the spokeswoman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group on human rights and humanitarian aid. On 9 September 2010 Steinbach resigned from the national board of the CDU after controversy surrounding her and her aids statements which blamed Hitler's invasion of Poland on Poland itself.
Erika Steinbach studied music and was a member of concert orchestras before becoming a politician.
Early life
Steinbach's father, Wilhelm Karl Hermann, was born in Hanau (Hesse, western-central Germany) but his family had come from Lower Silesia. In 1941 he was stationed within Nazi occupied Poland in the town of Rumia (Template:Lang-de),. 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.
Political career
Career in the CDU, Member of Parliament
In 1974 she joined the Frankfurt branch of the CDU party. In 1977 she was elected a member of the Frankfurt City Council and held that post until 1990.
She was elected a member of the Bundestag in 1990, one of two representatives of the constituency of Frankfurt In 1990 she voted against the German–Polish Border Treaty (1990). In 1997 she criticised the approval of the Czech-German Declaration of Reconciliation.
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. She is also a deputy member of the parliamentary Committee for the Interior. Since 2000, she has been a member of the national board of the CDU (German, CDU-Bundesvorstand).
In 2009, she was offered the position of Secretary of State in the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, but declined.
Federation of Expellees
Steinbach joined the German Federation of Expellees in 1994. In May 1998 she was elected President of the organization, and was re-elected in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010. The Federation of Expellees has approximately 2 million members. This figure was disputed in January 2010 by the German news service DDP, which reported an actual membership of 550,000.
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.
Steinbach has distanced herself from the Prussian Trust, that aggressively seeks restitution of German properties in Poland.
Steinbach represents the FoE on the board of the national broadcasting company ZDF.
Centre Against Expulsions
Erika Steinbach is the founder, along with Peter Glotz, of the foundation Centre Against Expulsions (Template:Lang-de), which is working to establish a museum 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.
The federal government established the federal foundation "Flucht, Vertreibung, Versöhnung" which is intended to be the basis of a future museum. The Federal of Expellees is entitled to appoint some of the board member, although they need to be confirmed by the cabinet.
On 4 March 2009 the Federation of Expellees decided not to nominate Steinbach to the council and instead left one seat unoccupied, after the social democratic party (SPD) threatened to veto Steinbach's appointment to the board. On October 19, 2009, after the SPD was ousted from government and replaced by a liberal-conservative coalition dominated by Steinbach's party, Steinbach announced her intention to take the seat at the board. However, objections against her were subsequently also raised by the new foreign minister Guido Westerwelle of the liberal FDP party. However, Steinbach is supported by her own party and the CSU party, both of which have called upon Westerwelle to give up his resistance, and have cited earlier statements by Westerwelle where he had praised Steinbach a few years ago.
In 2006 she was involved in an exhibition on the expulsions in Europe in the 20th century. The exhibition deals with expulsions of German, 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 .
International human rights activism
As the CDU/CSU spokeswoman for human rights, Erika Steinbach is involved in a number of activities promoting human rights worldwide.
She was an expert speaker at the International Cuba Conference of the International Society for Human Rights in 2006.
Franz Werfel Human Rights Award
Together with Peter Glotz, she was the primary initiator of the Franz Werfel Human Rights Award, and serves as a jury member together with Otto von Habsburg, Klaus Hänsch and Otto Graf Lambsdorff among others. It has been awarded every second year since 2003 in the Frankfurt Paulskirche. The 2009 recipient was Herta Müller.
Interest in Language
Steinbach was member of the Goethe-Institut from 1994 to 2002. She is also member of the Verein Deutsche Sprache.
Political positions
Erika Steinbach is viewed as conservative within the CDU in most fields of policy. Her work as a member of parliament focuses on human rights, and she is a strong critic of human rights violations in communist countries around the world. She is also a strong supporter of the process of European integration.
Steinbach endorses the Charta of the German expellees of August 1950.
Social policy
Erika Steinbach holds conservative views on social policy and opposes abortion and same-sex marriage, which sometimes has caused controversy.
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
Steinbach's public pronouncements have been criticized for causing a deterioration in German-Polish relations. Steinbach has a negative reputation in Poland, where she and the Centre against Expulsions are sometimes associated with Nazism. One example of this was a 2003 cover montage of Polish newsmagazine Wprost that depicted her 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.
Polish ambassador to Germany, Marek Prawda, Poland's Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk expressed unease with Steinbach's appointment to the board of the Center against Expulsions in February 2009.
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. On 16 September 2010, Steinbach attested Bartoszewski "a bad character" on German TV.
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 to German officer stationed in occupied Poland has been described as one of essential issues for Poles.
In 2011 Steinbach visited Poland for the third time, where she laid a floral wreath at the commemoral site of the victims of Nazism in Piasnica, and visited a church of Gdynia, where German expellee victims are commemorated.
In Germany the Polish criticism is considered to be part of an anti-German campaign in which Steinbach became the enemy stereotype and demonization of Steinbach a kind of reason of state. The way she is portrayed in Polish public is described as having rather "hysteric features" or a "psychosis". − Especially conservative nationalists in the PiS are blamed to have used her as a bogey in internal politics to counter Donald Tusk ignoring Steinbach's real views.
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 demonstrations by students who protested against Steinbach's allegedly revisionist views 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 that the university council invite Steinbach again.
Resignation
On September 2010, Steinbach resigned from the leadership of the CDU/CSU after controversial statements about the German invasion of Poland. Steinbach, in support of other members of her expellee organization, claimed that Hitler's attack on Poland was just a response to Poland's mobilization. According to mainstream historians, Poland's mobilization was itself a response to Hitler's armament program and threat of war from Germany. The statements angered Germany's Central Council of Jews.
Steinbach's resignation was met with mixed feelings within the CDU/CSU. Some members were worried that her departure could cause a split, and a formation of a new right wing party in Germany. However, others believed that Steinbach's departure strengthened the position of Merkel for whom Steinnbach had been an uncomfortable presence, due to her unashamedly revanchist politics, in the past, particularly since opinion polls in Germany indicate little support for the Federation of Expellees.
Honours
On July 9, 2009, she was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit by Prime Minister of Bavaria Horst Seehofer for her work for the rights of the victims of the Expulsion.
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
- http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,716756,00.html
- ^
- 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
- http://www.jungefreiheit.de/Single-News-Display.154+M5d2f0100871.0.html
- Template:De icon"BdV-Präsidentin Erika Steinbach mit überwältigender Mehrheit wiedergewählt". Bund der Vertriebenen website. BdV. 2004. Archived from the original on May 18, 2004. Retrieved May 8, 2004.
- "Steinbach im Amt bestätigt". KNA. 23 October 2010. Retrieved 24 October 2010.
- http://www.bund-der-vertriebenen.de/derbdv/struktur-1.php3
- Reprted by ARD News service in January 2010.(The figure of 550,000 does not include the State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) The news report mentioned that an expert in the area of Expellees Prof. Matthias Stickler of the University Würzburg as saying that a decline in BdV membership is understandable because it “mirrors the death of the generation of that era"
- Template:De icon Bundestag (1953). "Gesetz über die Angelegenheiten der Vertriebenen und Flüchtlinge". Juris.de. German Ministry of Justice. Retrieved February 28, 2005.
- ^ http://www.3sat.de/dynamic/sitegen/bin/sitegen.php?tab=2&source=/ard/buehler/97984/index.html
- Centre against Expulsions
- Spiegel.de, Vertriebenenbund zieht Steinbachs Nominierung zurück
- http://www.rp.pl/artykul/379628_Kolejny_ruch__Eriki_Steinbach__.html
- Der Spiegel: "Merkel wird den Fall Steinbach nicht los". 17 November 2009.
- http://nachrichten.rp-online.de/article/politik/CDU-Generalsekretaer-Steinbach-hat-das-volle-Vertrauen-der-Partei/59085
- http://www.bild.de/BILD/politik/2009/11/21/vertriebenen-chefin-erika-steinbach/aussenminister-guido-westerwelle-soll-sich-mit-ihr-versoehnen.html
- http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2135984,00.html http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2129971,00.html
- http://www.ishr.org/index.php?id=836
- Munzinger Online, s.v. Erika Steinbach, accessed 2010-09-12
- 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.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,444037,00.html
- http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,721659,00.jpg
- 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://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/Wiadomosci/1,80273,4383674.html
- http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4057645,00.html
- ^ 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
- Feindbild Erika Steinbach Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 1 March 2009 Template:De icon
- ^ Wahn und Raserei Sueddeutsche Zeitung, 8 January 2010
- Merkels Eiertanz um Erika Steinbach Die Tageszeitung, 24 February 2009 Template:De icon
- Die "Steinbach-Psychose" der Polen Rheinische Post 3 March 2009 Template:De icon
- Ein Popanz namens Erika Steinbach Der Westen, 25 February 2009 Template:De icon
- 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
