Friedrich Schorlemmer

Friedrich Schorlemmer (born 16 May 1944, Wittenberge, Germany) is a German Protestant theologian. He was a prominent member of the civil rights movement in the German Democratic Republic and has continued to take part in politics after German reunification in 1990.

Born in Wittenberge on the river Elbe, Friedrich Schorlemmer grew up in the small town of Werben in the region of Altmark, just south of it. The son of a Protestant minister was not allowed by the East German authorities to take the exam sat a normal secondary state school, but he passed his at an adult education centre. As a pacifist, he refused to do military service. From 1962 to 1967 he studied theology at Martin-Luther University in Halle. Then, he was a supervisor of studies in a hall of residence and a curate in Halle West. After his ordination in 1970, he worked as a minister in charge of young people and especially students in Merseburg. In 1978, he became a lecturer at the Protestant Preachers' Seminary in Wittenberg and also a preacher at All Saints' Church (Schlosskirche, "Castle Church") there, which is closely associated with Martin Luther and his 95 Theses. Finally, from 1992 until his retirement in December 2007, he was Head of Studies at the Protestant Academy of Saxony-Anhalt in Wittenberg.

Schorlemmer was a member of the Protestant synods of Saxony and of East Germany.

When, in 1968, Alexander Dubček tried to reform communism in Czechoslovakia in the Prague Spring, Schorlemmer and his friends not only sympathized with that development but also spread information about it. In the 1970s and 1980s, he worked for environmental, human rights and peace groups. The department "Political Underground" of the State Security Service (Stasi) put him under observation. He was responsible for a symbolical act at the Protestant Church Congress (Kirchentag) in Wittenberg on 24 September 1983, in which a sword was turned into a ploughshare by Stefan Nau, a local blacksmith. The State Security Service did not interfere because the future West German President Richard von Weizsäcker, who was then Mayor of West Berlin, attended the Congress as a representative of the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany, and the Western media reported about it.

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