Reimar Gilsenbach – a forgotten reminder

Where the village of Marzahn was once lay, a Trabant city (east) of Berlin was built in the 1970s. ”A text by Reimar Gilsenbach from 1986 begins. The new blocks reached close to the S-Bahn line. And beyond the tracks at the then S-Bahn station Bruno-Leuschner-Straße (now Raul-Wallenberg-Straße), the cemetery, whose high fences worked like an old manor, lies in the middle of Ödland. There: “There are three chestnuts a few hundred meters away.”

This group of trees occupies a central area in the books of Gilsenbach. Three trees on the open area, which, as in a story by Ingeborg Bachmann, did not bear any fruits and were definitely colored red and brown in the first days of October, as was flamed from autumn, a torch that an angel dropped. They were a dunning sign that marked the place where Hitler first gave members of a “non -European foreign breed”. Reimar Gilsenbach wrote about the 1200 people who were tortured here: »For nine years, Sinti from Berlin suffered and suffered from Berlin. Nothing reminds of it. However, if you go to the cemetery carefully from the three chestnuts and search the ground, you may find a handful of shards. Subs from cups, of porcelain dolls and nipples, shards of German history, witnesses to an unsuccessful and indispensable crime. “

Commitment to recognition

In the literature over the Nazi era, the “Gypsy camp” Marzahn had never been mentioned until then. This was no coincidence for Gilsenbach, he saw an aftermath of the “Third Reich”. Because after the war nobody praised to hide a sinto or to help him flee. Hitler knew very carefully why he first went against the weakest among the groups that should fall victim to the planned genocide. “And the anti -fascists?” Asks the writer. “Everything remained silent. As expected, nobody solidarizes with the ›Gypsies‹. Not up to this day! «The Marzahn forced camp was demonstrably deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in March 1943. Only seven of them survived, among them Otto Rosenberg, father of the pop singer Marianne Rosenberg.

The persecution of the Sinti and Roma was long regarded as racist, but as a crime -preventive persecution, said historian Patricia Pientka, in both German states. In the GDR, however, Reimar Gilsenbach was able to achieve through personal commitment that formerly persecuted Sinti were recognized as the victim of fascism. For example, the Sintiza Agnes S., which had been interned in the forced camp Marzahn since May 1936 and even had to live in the half -decay storage barrack for three and a half years after the end of the war. It was only in January 1949 that she got her own apartment. And since the Berlin committee of the anti-fascist resistance fighters did not see the internment in the Marzahn warehouse as a concentration camp, the woman refused to recognize the Nazi regime. Gilsenbach writes: »In 1967 I achieved that the Marzahn warehouse was expected to be under the concentration camp-like forced camp. I helped to make a new application « – with success.

Communist with good contacts

Reimar Gilsenbach (1925–2001) was a writer and journalist. Last but not least, it is thanks to his commitment that the memory of the forced camp is now an important part of the memorial culture in the Marzahn-Hellersdorf district. The first official memorial event goes back to his initiative at the end of June 1986: a still quite stiff and ritualized commemoration, as Patricia Pientka, himself Sinteza, wrote in her book as a forced camp, which, however, had the result that Gilsenbach was able to publish the first article about the camp. Finally, the GDR media reported, albeit to a rather modest extent. And of all things, Gilsenbach, who tried to remember like no other, has been forgotten today.

In the Stasi acts, specifically in the opening report of the operational process “Schreiber” of May 29, 1984, it says: “G. has published several books in recent years that were quickly out of print on the market. The last published books or new editions include the children’s books ›Around nature‹ and ›Janitschek in the Robberschloss‹, as well as a large circus novel with a total circulation of 600,000 copies. G. is currently working on the history of Roma and Sinti «.

According to today’s book market criteria, Reimar Gilsenbach was a bestselling author who was also committed to human rights and for the environment. All the more astonishing the MfS assessment of those days: »G. Apparently has the intention of obtaining celebrity that he cannot achieve through his literary work. “Gilsenbach was a” liaison person of the surgically known Havemann and Biermann “, who described himself as” communists “and understood himself from this position as” system critic “. »It cannot be ruled out that G. also understands himself as a communist, in ideological agreement with the views of Havemann and plans his activities. Also cannot be ruled out that it is inspired and controlled by enemy forces. “

The MfS district agency Eberswalde-Finow determined against Gilsenbach with a view to paragraphs 220 and 219 of the StGB of the GDR, ie because of the “public degradation of state organs and social organizations” as well as “unexamental connection” to organizations, groups or persons who acted against the state order of the GDR. There were up to two or three years in prison. But it hasn’t come that far. Apparently, Comrade Gilsenbach had a good wire up to Honecker. In the same OV file there is the note that his approved West Reisen “has a general advocacy of the office of the chairman of the State Council and General Secretary of the ZK of the SED”. When the child of a Sinti family was arbitrarily put into the home in the mid-1980s-the boy was repeatedly insulted and bullied because of his origin-not least Gilsenbach’s letters to Erich Honecker (his wife Hannelore also protested with Margot Honecker in the Ministry of Education), who brought the boy back to his parents.

Pronounced ecological interest

In his posthumous autobiography “Whoever marches in step in step, goes in the wrong direction” writes Gilsenbach: “I was born in September 1925 among freely practicing anarchists”, in a kind of land community in the coal spotted. He writes about reform fashion, nudeness and unbound love, first eco-freaks, hiking bird songs and “hiking birds in Sandiger Heide”; From a mother who raved to all the best and beautiful, and a father, “who was so anarchist that he didn’t even contribute to an anarcho club”. It is difficult to say how much of it corresponds to the truth, only so much that it is part of the essence of writing to give birth again.

Gilsenbach then lists further life stations in his memoirs: Jungvolk, Hitler Youth, Reich Labor Service, Wehrmacht, captivity and National Committee Free Germany. 1947 Return to Germany, home return school. In the manual “Who was in the GDR” it can be read that he was editor of the “Sächsische Zeitung” until 1949 and was released without notice for political reasons. A ten-year job followed in the Kulturbund magazine “Nature and Heimat”. A work that aroused his interest in ecological questions. The writer, who lives in Brodowin, was a member of the Nature and Home of the Cultural Association as well as on the central board of the Society for Nature and the Environment until 1989. In 1981 he launched the “Brodowiner Talks”. One of the participants, the moor ecologist Michael Succow, remembers: “It was a movement that combined clever minds who wanted to reform the GDR system.”

Finally, in the turning point, Gilsenbach was one of the founders of the GREE party of the GDR. A few years earlier, the MfS said that Gilsenbach was increasingly in conflict with the socialist social order due to his “strong ecological interest” because he overvalued the ecological thoughts, i.e. also emphasize certain tendencies for overexploitation and is due to system -related. One cannot clearly classify your basic attitude and motivation. His “political ambiguity” is expressed in the fact that he uses more and more reactionary and enemy circles of the Evangelical Church and so -called church peace circles to represent his positions. Michael Succow explains Gilsenbach’s message in simple words: »We leave nature unchanged, we cannot exist. If we destroy it, we perish. ”The narrow, narrowing line between change and destroy will only succeed in the long run of a society that feels in one of nature.

Reimar Gilsenbach would have turned 100 on September 16.

On Saturday, September 20, 2025, the Alliance for Democracy and Tolerance in the Marzahn-Hellersdorf Dermark-Twain Library reminds you with readings, discussions and concerts of Reimar Gilsenbach.