As a deacon, Günter Johannsen once initiated the prayers for peace in Leipzig’s Nikolaikirche, from which the Monday demonstrations for the overthrow of the GDR regime emerged. Today’s Feldkirchner defends himself against being appropriated by corona deniers.
It is not uncommon for coincidences that ultimately lead to significant events. Alexander Fleming, for example, discovered penicillin on a Petri dish that was forgotten before his summer vacation. The chain of events that led to the peaceful overthrow of the SED regime in the GDR in autumn 1989 was set in motion by chance – or “by an embarrassing mishap on my part,” as Günter Johannsen relates. The 71-year-old Feldkirchner initiated the peace prayers in the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig in 1982, from which a few years later the Monday demonstrations for the overthrow in the GDR emerged – those protests that opponents of the Corona measures wrongly referred to more than thirty years later called weekly “walks”.