Carola Stabe

Carola Stabe is a former dissident and civil rights activist in East Germany GDR. She is the founder and leader of the environmental group ARGUS in Potsdam, Germany. She initiated the GDR- wide opposition network of environmental groups, which later converged in the Grüne Liga.

Stabe was born in 1955 in Templin, Mecklenburg. Her father, Dr. Siegfried Stabe, was detained by the Soviets in 1945. Later, he became a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, a school principal and a representative in the East German People's Chamber. In 1975, during her studies of History and Russian at Humboldt University of Berlin, she was arrested because of a publication about the Soviet Gulags. From 1977 on, she worked as a teacher in Potsdam.

In April 1988, she initiated the founding of the group ARGUS (Consortium for Environmental Protection and Urban Design), which she led until December, 1989. In the summer of 1988, she began to build a network of environmental groups. As her base she used the Cultural Association of the GDR, the only place where assembly was legal, under the scrutiny of the Stasi. In April 1988 she organized the first GDR- wide meeting of environmental groups at the Cultural Association, together with Matthias Platzeck and other members of the ARGUS group in Potsdam. In June 1989, she organized, the 1. Potsdamer Pfingsbergfest, a public gathering at which the Stasi counted 3000 visitors from all over the GDR, together with Wieland Eschenburg and Matthias Platzeck. She used administrative loopholes to circumvent a prohibition of the assembly. During the gathering, oppositional groups distributed information leaflets.

A poster by graphic artist Bob Bahra and an information leaflet published by ARGUS helped to stop the demolition of Potsdam’s baroque city center, which had been planned by the leadership of the SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany). Because of her active role at Pfingstbergfest and other events that were critical of the system, Stabe was dismissed from the teaching profession in July 1989, for reasons of “counterrevolutionary activities”.

On October 7, 1989 she organized, together with Matthias Platzeck, the second GDR-wide meeting. 124 representatives of environmental groups followed an ARGUS invitation to Potsdam’s Cultural Association. The GDR leadership could not forbid the meeting. Stabe had announced it as a festivity for the 40th anniversary of the GDR. On the evening of October 7, representatives of the environmental groups signed a declaration, expressing the need for political changes and human rights in the GDR. The declaration was sent to the press in East- and West Berlin. During the meeting on October 7, a small group of dissidents around Stabe and Platzeck planted the idea for an environmental organization that would exist independently from the Cultural Association. In October 1989, the founding appeal for a “Green League” (Grüne Liga) was drafted. On November 15, 1989, Carola Stabe, Matthias Platzeck and members of the ARGUS group organized the 1. Potsdamer Umweltnacht an event at Potsdam’s Karl Liebknecht Stadium. Here, they made their call for he founding of the Grüne Liga public, in front of 3,000 people. From the middle of October 1989 on, Staube took part in talks towards the creation of a Green Party of the GDR.

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