Oskar Brüsewitz

Oskar Brüsewitz (May 30, 1929 – 22 August 1976) was an East German Lutheran pastor who committed public self-immolation on August 18, 1976, to protest the repression of religion in the Communist state of East Germany. He died four days later.

Biography With the Second World War nearing its end, Brüsewitz, age fifteen, was drafted into the Wehrmacht in Warsaw. An attempt to desert failed. He was captured by the Red Army and became a prisoner of war. He worked as a shoemaker after the war and converted to Christianity in 1954, then attended a Lutheran seminary from 1964 until 1969 in Erfurt. In 1970 he was ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church at Rippicha, near the town of Zeitz. He was critical of the East German Communist regime imposed by the Soviet Union after the war and symbolic acts of protest, including the installation of a cross of neon lamps at his church, brought him to the attention of the authorities. The leadership of his church sided with the state, rather than its priest, and asked, in 1976, for Brüsewitz to be moved to another rectorate. This was the immediate trigger for his suicidal protest in a crowded public square in front of the Michaelis church in Zeitz. In front of hundreds of persons, Reverend Brüsewitz "poured gasoline over himself and lighted up in flames". Neues Deutschland, the daily newspaper of the Communist SED party, reported the event afterward and described Brüsewitz as "an abnormal and sick man who suffered from delusions."

The Protestant church of the ecclesiastical province of Saxony commemorated his sacrifice twenty years later in 1996, six years after the reunification of Germany. Bishop Dehmke called his death an "act of desperation" in protest against the repressive nature of the Communist regime and the collaboration of church members who had grown too close to the state.

To mark the 30th anniversary of his death, Neues Deutschland wrote an apology for the article they had carried at the time, admitting that the piece had been "slanderous" and not written by their journalists, but by an office of the Central Committee of the SED. In addition they published some of the thousands of critical letters to the editor they had received but not printed in 1976. In the Federal Republic of Germany, the Paneuropa-Union established a Brüsewitz-Center to document the repression of opposition within the former East Germany.

Brüsewitz's death is known in Germany as the Fanal von Zeitz or "Fire Signal of Zeitz".