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Erika Steinbach (born July 25, 1943 as Erika Hermann) is a German politician controversial for her aim to build a monument against forced migration. Representing the CDU and the state of Hesse, she has been a member of the Parliament of Germany, the Bundestag, since 1990.
She has also been president of the Federation of Expellees since 1998 (succeeding Fritz Wittmann), and besides that is a member of the board of the Goethe-Institut, the national broadcasting company ZDF, and the Landsmannschaft Westpreußen. Erika Steinbach has studied music and been a member of concert orchestras before becoming a fulltime politician.
Biography
She was born in the village of Rumia (then Rahmel in Danzig-West Prussia, which had recently been reannexed to Germany after 19 years of Polish rule) in Nazi occupied Poland. Her father was a Luftwaffe NCO (feldwebel) from Hanau in western Germany, who served as a technician at the local airport during the war. In January 1944 her father was sent to the Eastern Front and in January 1945, Steinbach's mother escaped with her children (Steinbach's sister was born in October) to Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany. In 1950, after five years in a refugee camp, they managed to move to Hanau. As she was a daughter of German soldier, only stationed in Rahmel during the war, and escaped during an evacuation performed by German rather than Polish or Soviet authorities, Steinbach's status as an expellee, and allegedly hence her suitability to head the Federation of Expellees, has been questioned by Poles and remains somewhat controversial in Poland. However, according to German law, she is legally an expellee.
The Centre Against Expulsions
One of her main aims is to build a monument against forced migration in the centre of Berlin, devoted to German victims of World War II. She is the chairwoman of the newly founded Centre Against Expulsions (Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen). This initiative, supported by the CDU/CSU faction in the parliament, has caused controversy. Opponents of the proposed form of Centre object to emphasizing only German suffering; others see it as an inappropriate counter-balance to the Holocaust memorial. In the petition "For a critical and enlightened debate about the past" historians expressed concerns the centre would establish and popularize a one-sided image of the past, without historical context. Many well-known European intellectuals and politicians, including Germans Günter Grass and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, in 2003 expressed support for a centre devoted to all expelled during the 20th century, located in some place connected with expulsions, e.g. Wrocław.
However, Steinbach claims the Centre will represent the suffering of other nations as well. "All victims of genocide and expulsion need a place in our hearts and in the historical memory. Human rights are indivisible," the Centre points out on its official home page. The Centre Against Expulsions have been supported by many human rights activists, historians, political scientists including Nobel laureate Imre Kertész, Joachim Gauck, former Austrian crown prince Otto von Habsburg, Guido Knopp, György Konrád, Alfred M. de Zayas and others. The Bavarian Prime Minister and leader of CSU Edmund Stoiber argued that "the place for a museum showing the dreadful fate of expelled Germans is in the German capital".
German Foreign minister Joschka Fischer commented on Steinbach, and her initiative for a Centre Against Expulsions to "...have caused serious damage to German-Polish relations. Not amongst extremist nationalist forces that do exist in Poland, but amongst old friends and major agents for reconciliation between our two countries."
Among the German and Polish public, dispute has sometimes been fierce. Reminders of past evils have occurred as arguments or insults. For instance, the Polish newspaper Wprost published a cover photo-montage of Erika Steinbach in an SS uniform (photo). However, the Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller condemned this and apologized to the German Chancellor. As part of the same controversy, the Federation of Expellees and Steinbach sued the German journalist Gabriele Lesser for defamation related to an article published on September 19, 2003, in the daily Kieler Nachrichten. The Federation largely won the case against Lesser.
Steinbach was re-elected as president of the Bund der Vertriebenen by an overwhelming majority on May 8, 2004.
External links
- Biography as a member of the German Bundestag (in German).
- Profile as president of the BdV (in German).
- Official homepage of the Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen (click here to skip Flash intro). Photograph of the Chairpersons of the Foundation. Photograph of the members of the jury of the Franz Werfel Human Rights Award, at their first meeting (Steinbach at far-right).
- "Border Dispute", an article by M.M. in The Warsaw Voice (7 August 2003) on Steinbach's appeal for the "National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Displacement" and the debate over the Center of the Expelled.
- "Discussion about Center Against Expulsions revives", a RFE/RL report by Bartosz Stefanczyk (26 August 2003).