Evelyn Zupke

Evelyn Zupke (born Evelyn Wiehler; 28 February 1962) is a specialist care and social worker who came to prominence in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) during the 1980s as a democracy activist.

She was a co-organiser of the project to uncover and publicise state mandated electoral fraud in the local government elections of 7 May 1989, which was a key step in the buildup to the Peaceful Revolution and prepared the way for reunification, formally in October 1990.

Life Evelyn Wiehler was born in Binz, the largest coastal resort on the East German island of Rügen. Her mother was a school teacher. In 1980 Evelyn successfully passed her school leaving exams (Abitur) which for most people would have opened the way to a university level education. When she was 18 she resigned from the FDJ, which was the youth wing of the country's ruling Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands / SED). By the time she left school she had been identified as a political non-conformist and a university level education was therefore not available to her. Instead she trained for work in the catering sector.

Rügen was a major holiday destination and she was able to work as a waitress and selling ice cream with the holiday service of the National Trades Union Federation.

She then switched sectors to work in the "Care of the mentally disabled", which in East Germany was organised partly under the auspices of the evangelical churches alliance diaconate. In 1987 she relocated to East Berlin. She now came into contact with the Weißensee Peace Circle ("Friedenskreis Weißensee"), one of the opposition groups emerging in East Germany in response to the changing political mood coming out of Moscow. By 1987 she was a member of the Weißensee Peace Circle.

For the local government elections held on 7 May 1989 a number of East German opposition groups co-ordinated their activities to evaluate the fairness of the process, through simple observation at the polling stations and counting. The implausibility of reported election results in East Germany was nothing new, but the mood of openness and the increase in citizen dissatisfaction with the system supported a move to identify and publicise what was done. Although observation and analysis took place across the country, the election monitoring undertaken by citizens in the Berlin quarter of Weißensee was particularly detailed, due in part to Evelyn Zupke's careful organisation of it and in part to the number of people participating in the exercise. In contrast to other towns and districts, in Weißensee there were observers at virtually every polling station. Of the 66 polling stations only one operated unobserved. All this was taking place in the context of a rising tide of street protest in the East German cities more generally. Zupke was also working on the ad hoc telephone call centre which opposition activists had been able to set up at the Gethsemane Church, and taking part in the "Dauermahnwache" (vigil) set up on 2 October in support of demonstrators in Leipzig who had been arrested the previous month and remained in detention.

More significant than the breach of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 was the dawning realisation that the Soviet troops in East Germany had no orders to intervene. This triggered a succession of steps along the path to German reunification. Evelyn Zupke participated in these political developments in various ways. She participated in the "Round Table" forums of 1989/90 in Berlin-Weißensee Along with that she worked in the Initiative for Peace and Human Rights (Initiative Frieden und Menschenrechte / IFM) and in the Matthias Domaschk Archive at the newly created Robert Havemann Society.

Awards and honours (not a complete list) 2001 Order of Merit of Berlin 2008 Foundation Prize (2007) of the Ludwig Schlaich foundation for "Die Spuren der Vergangenheit als Chance für die Zukunft"