Guest post
Gregor Gysi
“A fighter all his life” – Gregor Gysi remembers Peter Sodann
Peter Sodann in front of his parents’ house in Weinböhla in Saxony-Anhalt in 1994.
© Gerald Hänel / Laif
He was already a drama director in the GDR, and in the Federal Republic he became a popular crime scene detective. But he was also politically active. Peter Sodann has now died at the age of 87. The former left-wing parliamentary group leader Gregor Gysi remembers him.
Although the sentence was later shortened, he then got good engagements and was even able to work as an acting director in Halle. But he told me that the experience of his time in prison still had an impact on him.
Gregor Gysi is a member of the Bundestag for the Left party.
© Annette Riedl/dpa
Then he had no fear of contact with the left
It was all the more exciting for me that after 1989 he was one of those who advocated a more differentiated view of the GDR stood. He did not relativize SED rule, the Stasi and deaths at the Wall, but he did not reduce the state to them either. He also knew life in the GDR. And he had no fear of contact with my party, although it at least did not promote his career as a crime scene inspector in the Federal Republic.
I am also incredibly grateful to Peter Sodann that he even ran for Federal President for the Left in 2009, although of course he knew that he had no chance. He was important not only as an artist, but also as a politician.
What particularly touched me about him was the zeal with which he built and maintained his life’s project, the Peter Sodann Library. In it he collected all the books that were published between 1945 and 1990 in the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR. I was there several times, most recently for his 87th birthday on June 1st last year. He recently called me and invited me again, the date of June 1, 2024 is still on my calendar. But unfortunately his death intervened.
Protocol: Martin Debes