Carola Stern

Carola Stern ( 14 November 1925 – 19 January 2006 ) was the name under which Erika Assmus reinvented herself as a serious journalist and (subsequently) author and politically committed television presenter, after she was obliged to relocate at short notice from East Germany to West Germany in 1951.

She was a co-founder of the German section of the Human Rights organisation, Amnesty International.

She was held in high regard by her fellow writers, and was the vice-president of the energetic German Section of PEN International between 1987 and 1995, after which she became a PEN "Honorary President". Her widowed mother ran a guest house.

During the Nazi years she was a group leader in the League of German Girls (BDM/), membership of which, as sources are quick to point out, was almost universal among girls in small-town Germany at the time. She herself was later hugely self-critical of her "stupid conformity" when writing her autobiographical book "In the Nets of Memory" (1986) as she grew up in the 1930s, while also savagely lamenting the failure of contemporaries to recall their own conformity with the pervasive themes of Nazi Germany.

She successfully completed her schooling in 1944. The end of the war was a disaster for her mother, a committed adherent of National Socialism, but Erika was by now critical of the politicians' slogans exhorting the people to hold out as the end approached.

As World War II ended she joined the general flight towards the west. Between September 1945 and January 1947 she worked as a librarian at the Rabe Missile Research Institute in Bleicherode, a small town in Thuringia where the Soviets had gathered together rocket specialists from the former Peenemünde Army Research Center, which had itself been destroyed and evacuated when the German military had begun to contemplate the possibility of defeat. She was recruited as an agent by the Counterintelligence Corps of the U.S. Army (CIC), which mandated her to infiltrate the Free German Youth (FDJ /), which was effectively at this time a Communist youth organisation.

From 1976 she became a co-producer, together with Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass, of a journal called "L '76" (and renamed "L '80" four years later) which, among other things, offered a platform for Czech dissident writers who had been obliged to leave Czechoslovakia after that country underwent a Soviet invasion in August 1968.

Later years Carola Stern retired from television in 1985 but continued writing books, and she retained the campaigning habit. In 2000, with Hartmut von Hentig and Günter Grass, she signed a demand that compensation should not be further delayed for victims of the Nazi forced labour policies.

Personal

1970 Jakob Kaiser Prize (broadcasting/reportage) 1972 Carl von Ossietzky Medal (peace and human rights) 1988 Nordrhein-Westfalen Prize (cultural, scientific or general) 1994 Hermann Kesten Prize (literary prize for support of persecuted authors) 1995 Hermann Sinsheimer Prize (literature) 1998 Roswitha Prize (literature – women only) 1998 Louise Schroeder Medal (peace, democracy, social justice) 2001 Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany As a former Communist Zöger had suffered persecution during the Nazi period. His advocacy of reforms as an influential journalist in East Germany during the late 1950s had nevertheless left him arrested there as an enemy of the (Communist) state, and in 1959 he had fled to West Germany.

In memoriam In the coastal resort of Bansin on the Island of Usedom some of Stern's belongings are on display at the Hans Werner Richter House. The local council of her own birthplace nearby, Ahlbeck, had already, while she was still alive, rejected the idea of setting up a memorial to her.

On 28 January 2008, the German section of PEN International announced the creation of the Darmstadt based Carola Stern Foundation. Objectives of the foundation are to support threatened and persecuted writers along with their families, and to facilitate their integration in Germany.

Publications 1954: Die SED. – Handbuch über den Aufbau, die Organisation und Funktion des Parteiapparats der SED. 1957: Porträt einer bolschewistischen Partei. – Entwicklung, Funktion und Situation der SED. Wie konnte die SED alle anderen gesellschaftlich relevanten Gruppen aus der Macht verdrängen? 1964: Ulbricht. Eine politische Biographie. – Darstellung der Frühgeschichte der SED. 1971: Lexikon zur Geschichte und Politik im 20. Jahrhundert – as co-producer 1975: Willy Brandt. rororo Monographien Nr. 50.232. 1979: Zwei Christen in der Politik – Gustav Heinemann und Helmut Gollwitzer. – Gustav Heinemann gewidmet. 1979: Wendepunkte der deutschen Geschichte. – produced together with Heinrich A. Winkler. 1980: Strategien für die Menschenrechte. 1981: amnesty international – Wer schweigt, wird mitschuldig. – als Herausgeberin. 1986: Isadora Duncan und Sergej Jessenin. Der Dichter und die Tänzerin. – rororo Taschenbücher Nr. 22.531. 1986: In den Netzen der Erinnerung. Lebensgeschichten zweier Menschen. – rororo Taschenbücher Nr. 12.227. 1990: "Ich möchte mir Flügel wünschen." Das Leben der Dorothea Schlegel. rororo Taschenbücher Nr. 13.368. 1994: Der Text meines Herzens. Das Leben der Rahel Varnhagen. – rororo Taschenbücher Nr. 13.901. 1998: Die Sache, die man Liebe nennt. Das Leben der Fritzi Massary. – 2000: rororo Taschenbücher Nr. 22.529. 2000: Männer lieben anders. Helene Weigel und Bertolt Brecht. – Rowohlt, Berlin. 2001: Doppelleben. – Autobiografie, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln. 2003: Alles, was ich in der Welt verlange. Das Leben der Johanna Schopenhauer. – Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln. 2004: "Uns wirft nichts mehr um." Eine Lebensreise, aufgezeichnet von Thomas Schadt. – Rowohlt, Reinbek. 2005: Eine Erdbeere für Hitler: Deutschland unterm Hakenkreuz. – Book for young people written together with Ingke Brodersen. 2005: Auf den Wassern des Lebens. – Doppelbiographie von Gustaf Gründgens und Marianne Hoppe. Verlag Kiepenheuer und Witsch, Köln, 19.90Euro, 400 Seiten. 2006: Kommen Sie, Cohn! – zusammen mit Ingke Brodersen, Verlag Kiepenheuer und Witsch, Köln, 16.90Euro, 192 pages. Doppelbiographie und deutsch-jüdische Familiengeschichte des Verlegers Friedrich Cohn und der Schriftstellerin Clara Viebig. Her last book, which appeared posthumously .

Some memberships 1961–1970 Deputy chair then chair of the Federal Republic of Germany's section of Amnesty International. 1970–1972 International Executive Committee of Amnesty International. from 1972 Member of PEN International: West German Section. 1987–1995 Vice-president PEN International, German Section. from 1995 Honorary president PEN International, German Section. from 1997 Patron of the newly established Berlin based :de:Varnhagen GesellschaftVarnhagen Society Advisory board member Against forgetting – For democracy Member Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD / ) Former member Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED /)