Hartmut Gründler
Encyclopedia
Hartmut Gründler was a German teacher from Tübingen
, engaged in environmental protection
, who burned himself out of protest against the misinformation
in the atomic policy of the German
Federal Government
at that time, which were documented by him, but officially never taken back, and the denial of the relevant dialogue with Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt
.
TH (Technical Highschool) (with bricklayer examination 1952) and his studies of pedagogy at Jugenheim (1957–59) he worked as a teacher in the Hessian school service, and in 1964, after a six months’ further training course in French, he passed the secondary school teacher examination. Granted leave, from November 1965 to He1967, for German classes at the Goethe Institute and after this within the French-German youth exchange program, he pursued a study of pedagogy, educational psychology and general linguistics at Tübingen
and Besançon
and graduated in 1969 (Magister Artium). He began to work on his doctoral thesis on a psycholinguistical topic.
against majority resolutions he, in 1972, originated the smaller "Working Group Protection of Life - Non-violent Action in Environmental Protection (registered association)" (AKL). In co-operation with the BfU he criticized the Stuttgart exhibition "Environment 72" sharply. From 1974 he became likewise engaged in the dispute over the atomic power plant intended for Mittelstadt (district Reutlingen
). He advocated emphatically a coordinating umbrella association of the different federations for environmental protection. On July 25, 1975 he unsuccessfully submitted to Chief Federal Prosecutor Siegfried Buback
a charge against Secretary of Research Hans Matthöfer
"because of genocide".
From 1975 he participated in altogether 20 legal actions against atomic projects. In February 1977 he brought in a constitutional complaint because of the restriction of his right of petition. In his decedent estate there was no reference to any answer in his lifetime.
, the person who -in accordance with the German Basic Law - is responsible for the guidelines of the policy, and demanded public clarification of the contradictions that in his eyes had come to light openly, in June 1976, in the Bonn Hearings (in the Research Committee on June 2 and in the Interior Committee on June 9) as compared to the environmental program of September 29, 1971, valid up to then. The chancellor never answered personally. Gründler‘s last unlimited hunger strike
, planned therefore in November 1977, did not come off due to external difficulties - particularly because of the cancelling of a given promise for a camper van.
Party Congress out of protest against "the continued governmental misinformation" in the energy policy, particularly concerning the permanent disposal of nuclear waste. Not out of despair, but to set an example did he choose death by burning himself, about which he informed in writing some press organs as well as politicians and also the chancellor in advance, attaching his political last will. Thus on November 14, 77, two days before his fire suicide, he made a flyer, printed on both sides, with the heading "Please pass on… please inform a journalist from press, radio, television rapidly! … Also hand on to Members of the Bundestag!!! - Self-immolation of a Life Protector - appeal against atomic lie…", and speaking of himself in the third person he wrote among other things the following: "Gründler calls his action an act not of despair, but of resistance and resolution. To the inherent necessity of greed of profit, of confidence trick
s, of taking people unawares here, and the inherent necessity of inertia and cowardice there, he wants to oppose the inherent necessity of conscience
." And in the "appendix" to this appeal, addressed directly to the Federal Chancellor, he wrote: "I choose the last and utmost form of protest, and instead of the lighthouse [to supplement: the "granite one", planned for three weeks ] I nevertheless still use the sandcastle at least for a fire signal.
and especially of Oskar Brüsewitz
on the other side." Hartmut Gründler - after a planned procession with the catafalque through different places of his activity in the German Federal Republic had been forbidden by Hamburg authorities - was buried at the Tübingen Bergfriedhof on November 30, 1977 under participation of approximately 1000 mourners from at home and abroad. During the following commemoration in the lecture hall of the university, ending riotous through the "Remstal Rebel" Helmut Palmer, some representatives of ecological currents, at variance before, discovered common ground on the podium, partly co-operating later in the GREENS
: thus beside the futurologist Robert Jungk
and the Member of the Bundestag Herta Däubler-Gmelin
(SPD), who tried to explain the result of the Party Congress, one could hear prominent representatives of the Federal Association of Citizens' Initiatives for Environmental Protection (BBU), of the World Union for Protection of Life
(WSL), of the Federation for protection of life (BfL), of the Action Community of Independent Germans (AUD), of the Five%-Bloc and of the Tübingen Federation for Environmental Protection (BfU), so that the Swabian Daily headlined: "Does the Green Front march now?"
In his still existing Working Group for Protection of Life the collection of numerous documents from Gründler’s creative career as well as from the aftermath has been archived and is being supplemented and enriched by contemporary testimonies, also as the basis of an extended biography. This material is still attended to, for the time being, by Wilfried Hüfler, Reutlingen.
Tübingen
Tübingen is a traditional university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-Geography:...
, engaged in environmental protection
Environmental protection
Environmental protection is a practice of protecting the environment, on individual, organizational or governmental level, for the benefit of the natural environment and humans. Due to the pressures of population and our technology the biophysical environment is being degraded, sometimes permanently...
, who burned himself out of protest against the misinformation
Misinformation
Misinformation is false or inaccurate information that is spread unintentionally. It is distinguished from disinformation by motive in that misinformation is simply erroneous, while disinformation, in contrast, is intended to mislead....
in the atomic policy of the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
Federal Government
Federal government
The federal government is the common government of a federation. The structure of federal governments varies from institution to institution. Based on a broad definition of a basic federal political system, there are two or more levels of government that exist within an established territory and...
at that time, which were documented by him, but officially never taken back, and the denial of the relevant dialogue with Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt
Helmut Schmidt
Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt is a German Social Democratic politician who served as Chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982. Prior to becoming chancellor, he had served as Minister of Defence and Minister of Finance. He had also served briefly as Minister of Economics and as acting...
.
Vocational career
After his discontinued study of architecture at DarmstadtDarmstadt
Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...
TH (Technical Highschool) (with bricklayer examination 1952) and his studies of pedagogy at Jugenheim (1957–59) he worked as a teacher in the Hessian school service, and in 1964, after a six months’ further training course in French, he passed the secondary school teacher examination. Granted leave, from November 1965 to He1967, for German classes at the Goethe Institute and after this within the French-German youth exchange program, he pursued a study of pedagogy, educational psychology and general linguistics at Tübingen
Tübingen
Tübingen is a traditional university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-Geography:...
and Besançon
Besançon
Besançon , is the capital and principal city of the Franche-Comté region in eastern France. It had a population of about 237,000 inhabitants in the metropolitan area in 2008...
and graduated in 1969 (Magister Artium). He began to work on his doctoral thesis on a psycholinguistical topic.
The Tübingen years from 1970 to 1977 in the service of environmental protection
Engaged early already in questions of environmental protection and politics, he became active in the Marxist Leninistic oriented Tübingen Committee for Environmental Protection (KfU) in the end of 1970 and, in January 1971, he created the Tübingen Federation for Environmental Protection (BfU), now statutably committed to non-violence. After exclusion from this group because of his refusal to give up his own way inspired by Gandhi’s SatyagrahaSatyagraha
Satyagraha , loosely translated as "insistence on truth satya agraha soul force" or "truth force" is a particular philosophy and practice within the broader overall category generally known as nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. The term "satyagraha" was conceived and developed by Mahatma...
against majority resolutions he, in 1972, originated the smaller "Working Group Protection of Life - Non-violent Action in Environmental Protection (registered association)" (AKL). In co-operation with the BfU he criticized the Stuttgart exhibition "Environment 72" sharply. From 1974 he became likewise engaged in the dispute over the atomic power plant intended for Mittelstadt (district Reutlingen
Reutlingen
Reutlingen is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is the capital of the eponymous district of Reutlingen. As of April 2008, it has a population of 109,828....
). He advocated emphatically a coordinating umbrella association of the different federations for environmental protection. On July 25, 1975 he unsuccessfully submitted to Chief Federal Prosecutor Siegfried Buback
Siegfried Buback
Siegfried Buback was the Attorney General of Germany from 1974-1977.Buback studied at the University of Leipzig. From 1940 to 1945 he was a member of the Nazi Party. From 1945 to 1947 he was a POW...
a charge against Secretary of Research Hans Matthöfer
Hans Matthöfer
Hans Hermann Matthöfer was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.Between 1974 and 1978 Matthöfer served as secretary of research and technology. In 1978 he took over as secretary of finance and in 1982 he left that post and served briefly as secretary of telecommunication...
"because of genocide".
From 1975 he participated in altogether 20 legal actions against atomic projects. In February 1977 he brought in a constitutional complaint because of the restriction of his right of petition. In his decedent estate there was no reference to any answer in his lifetime.
Gründler’s kind of public relations work
In the conviction that fellow citizens would come to acting in environmental protection questions, if only they were informed well enough and addressed in their responsibility, Gründler carried on an extensive public relations scheme, particularly by means of numerous flyers, which he distributed and had distributed particularly in the university town of Tübingen. According to the principle "everyone knows that everyone knows" he moreover developed an unusual communications network, in which he added the addressees of the copies circulated in each case in his numerous publications and appeals usually addressed to several multiplicators and decision makers at a time.Gründler’s "Experiment with truth"
Stamped by Gandhi he tried, through hunger strikes (so in Wyhl, Tübingen, Kassel) and numerous open letters (to parliamentarians, ministers, journalists etc.) to enforce a change in the energy policy. His first "conflict partner", Federal Secretary of Research Hans Matthöfer, responded to Gründler’s demand for discussion within the "Citizens’ Dialogue Nuclear Energy" conceded to him in July 1975, finally confessed, however, to the long-term execution of the atomic program in a letter in June 1976. From summer 1976 on, Gründler addressed himself to Federal Chancellor Helmut SchmidtHelmut Schmidt
Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt is a German Social Democratic politician who served as Chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982. Prior to becoming chancellor, he had served as Minister of Defence and Minister of Finance. He had also served briefly as Minister of Economics and as acting...
, the person who -in accordance with the German Basic Law - is responsible for the guidelines of the policy, and demanded public clarification of the contradictions that in his eyes had come to light openly, in June 1976, in the Bonn Hearings (in the Research Committee on June 2 and in the Interior Committee on June 9) as compared to the environmental program of September 29, 1971, valid up to then. The chancellor never answered personally. Gründler‘s last unlimited hunger strike
Hunger strike
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not...
, planned therefore in November 1977, did not come off due to external difficulties - particularly because of the cancelling of a given promise for a camper van.
The fire suicide
On November 16, 1977 ( the Day of Prayer and Repentance) Gründler burned himself in Hamburg during the SPDSocial Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
Party Congress out of protest against "the continued governmental misinformation" in the energy policy, particularly concerning the permanent disposal of nuclear waste. Not out of despair, but to set an example did he choose death by burning himself, about which he informed in writing some press organs as well as politicians and also the chancellor in advance, attaching his political last will. Thus on November 14, 77, two days before his fire suicide, he made a flyer, printed on both sides, with the heading "Please pass on… please inform a journalist from press, radio, television rapidly! … Also hand on to Members of the Bundestag!!! - Self-immolation of a Life Protector - appeal against atomic lie…", and speaking of himself in the third person he wrote among other things the following: "Gründler calls his action an act not of despair, but of resistance and resolution. To the inherent necessity of greed of profit, of confidence trick
Confidence trick
A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. A confidence artist is an individual working alone or in concert with others who exploits characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty and honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility,...
s, of taking people unawares here, and the inherent necessity of inertia and cowardice there, he wants to oppose the inherent necessity of conscience
Conscience
Conscience is an aptitude, faculty, intuition or judgment of the intellect that distinguishes right from wrong. Moral judgement may derive from values or norms...
." And in the "appendix" to this appeal, addressed directly to the Federal Chancellor, he wrote: "I choose the last and utmost form of protest, and instead of the lighthouse [to supplement: the "granite one", planned for three weeks ] I nevertheless still use the sandcastle at least for a fire signal.
Reactions and impact
The media hardly reported on the background. In Wolfgang Hädecke’s biographic writing "The Gründler Scandal", made on the basis of investigations of his own, DER SPIEGEL (The Mirror) and the Stern (Star) are particularly criticized in this regard. And actually Hädecke particularly complains of "a blatant disparity between the paltry, fast abating press coverage and poor commentating with many distortions in the case of Gründler on one side and the mighty indignation after the fire suicide of Jan PalachJan Palach
Jan Palach was a Czech student who committed suicide by self-immolation as a political protest.- Death :...
and especially of Oskar Brüsewitz
Oskar Brüsewitz
Oskar Brüsewitz was an East German Lutheran pastor who committed self-immolation to protest the repression of religion in the Communist state of East Germany...
on the other side." Hartmut Gründler - after a planned procession with the catafalque through different places of his activity in the German Federal Republic had been forbidden by Hamburg authorities - was buried at the Tübingen Bergfriedhof on November 30, 1977 under participation of approximately 1000 mourners from at home and abroad. During the following commemoration in the lecture hall of the university, ending riotous through the "Remstal Rebel" Helmut Palmer, some representatives of ecological currents, at variance before, discovered common ground on the podium, partly co-operating later in the GREENS
Greens
Greens may refer to:*Leaf vegetables such as collard greens, mustard greens, spring greens, winter greens, spinach, etc.-Politics:Supranational* Green politics* Green party, political parties adhering to Green politics* Global Greens...
: thus beside the futurologist Robert Jungk
Robert Jungk
Robert Jungk , also known as Robert Baum and Robert Baum-Jungk, was an Austrian writer and journalist who wrote mostly on issues relating to nuclear weapons....
and the Member of the Bundestag Herta Däubler-Gmelin
Herta Däubler-Gmelin
Herta Däubler-Gmelin is a former German Minister of Justice. Amid controversy, she resigned in 2002 after a remark about George W. Bush.-History:...
(SPD), who tried to explain the result of the Party Congress, one could hear prominent representatives of the Federal Association of Citizens' Initiatives for Environmental Protection (BBU), of the World Union for Protection of Life
World Union for Protection of Life
The World Union for Protection of Life is an international non-profit organization and non-governmental organization which was founded 1958 in Salzburg by the writer Günther Schwab...
(WSL), of the Federation for protection of life (BfL), of the Action Community of Independent Germans (AUD), of the Five%-Bloc and of the Tübingen Federation for Environmental Protection (BfU), so that the Swabian Daily headlined: "Does the Green Front march now?"
In his still existing Working Group for Protection of Life the collection of numerous documents from Gründler’s creative career as well as from the aftermath has been archived and is being supplemented and enriched by contemporary testimonies, also as the basis of an extended biography. This material is still attended to, for the time being, by Wilfried Hüfler, Reutlingen.
Literature
- Hartmut Gründler, Open letter to Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and others: "Offenbarungseid der Atomlobby" ("The Atomic Lobby’s declaration of bankruptcy") Oktober 5, 1976
- Hartmut Gründler: "Kernenergiewerbung. Die sprachliche Verpackung der Atomenergie – Aus dem Wörterbuch des Zwiedenkens", ("Nuclear power advertising. The linguistic packaging of atomic energy - From the dictionary of double-think"), Rowohlt Literaturmagazin 8 "Die Sprache des Großen Bruders" ("The Language of Big Brother"), Dec. 1977
- Herbert Bruns: "Hartmut Gründler † - For truth and probity in bioprotection and biopolitics - Fire suicide of a life protector" - in: Biologische Abhandlungen Nr. 53-54, Biologie-Verlag Wiesbaden 1977
- Walter Soyka: "Werden Tote mehr gehört als Lebende?" Der Rechtsweg, Dokumentenreihe aus dem Archiv für biologische Sicherheit." ("Shall dead men be listened to more than the living?" Legal action, series of documents from the Archive for biological security, Nr. 4, November 22, 1977. Contents a.o.: On the suicide of Hartmut Gründler. Information material & Dokumentation on legal actions against the weapons-grade plutonium technology in Germany
- Hansjürgen Bulkowski: "Das nichtverstandene Signal. Die Selbstverbrennung des Umweltpolitikers Hartmut Gründler." ("The signal not understood. The fire suicide of the environmental politician Hartmut Gründler.") Radio essay. WDR: 1978 (rebroadcast 1988).
- Wolfgang Hädecke: "Der Skandal Gründler" ("The Gründler Scandal"), 1979, ISBN 3-7846-1201-6
- Hartmut Gründler: "Kernenergiewerbung. Die sprachliche Verpackung der Atomenergie – Aus dem Wörterbuch des Zwiedenkens" ("Nuclear power advertising. The linguistic packaging of atomic energy - From the dictionary of double-think"), in: Holzfeuer im hölzernen Ofen (wood fire in a wooden stove). Essays on political criticism of language, ed. by Hans J. Heringer. Tübingen (Narr) 1982, 203-215
- Wilfried Hüfler / Manfred Westermayer (Editors): "Hartmut Gründler - ein Leben für die Wahrheit, ein Tod gegen die Lüge. Schriften - Dokumente - Würdigungen" ("Hartmut Gründler - A life for truth, a death against lie. Writings - documents - Appraisal.") Gundelfingen: G&M-Westermayer Verlag 1997, 80 pages. ISBN 3-923596-06-5,
- Hans-Dieter Knop, "Sozialpsychologische Dimensionen von Selbstverbrennung, exemplarisch thematisiert am moralischen und ethischen Konzept Hartmut Gründlers." ("Social-psychological dimensions of fire suicide, thematized exemplarily at the moral and ethical concept of Hartmut Gründler."), master's thesis in the subject of social psychology, Universität Hannover, 2002
- "Vor 30 Jahren verbrannte sich Hartmut Gründler aus Protest" ("30 years ago Hartmut Gründler burned himself out of protest.") http://linkszeitung.de/content/view/154094/42/
- Udo Grashoff/Tobias Barth: "Ein Tod für das Leben? Die öffentliche Selbstverbrennung von Hartmut Gründler am 16. November 1977 in Hamburg." ("A death for life? The public fire suicide of Hartmut Gründler on November 16, 1977 in Hamburg."), Feature for the SFB, broadcast Nov.13, 2002
- Prof. Dr. Ulrich Duchrow: “Mahatma Gandhi – Die Überwindung westlicher Gewalt” („Mahatma Gandhi – Overcoming Western Violence“), commemoration on the 30th anniversary of the death of Hartmut Gründler on December 17, 2007 at Tübingen, in „Forum Pazifismus“ I/2008