Erich Kranz
Biography
A parish priest in Weimar whose sermons on 4 and 5 October 1989 the city's own account treats as the opening of its peaceful revolution.
Two sermons in October, 1989
On 4 and 5 October 1989 he preached in Weimar, calling people to take responsibility. The city, looking back, dates the beginning of the peaceful upheaval here to that 4 October — which makes a pulpit, rather than a square, the place where Weimar's autumn started. The first street demonstration was still three weeks away.
Why a priest
In the GDR the churches were the one institution the state did not wholly control, and their rooms were where an alternative could be spoken aloud before it could be walked. That is a general fact about 1989 across East Germany; the Weimar instance of it has this name attached, and the town's own record of that autumn is organised around the places where he worked.
Questions visitors ask
- Who was Erich Kranz?
- A Weimar parish priest whose sermons of 4 and 5 October 1989 the city's own account treats as the opening of its peaceful revolution.
- What did Erich Kranz do in October 1989?
- On 4 and 5 October he preached in Weimar, calling people to take responsibility. The city dates the beginning of its peaceful upheaval to that 4 October — three weeks before the first street demonstration.
- Why was a priest central to Weimar's 1989 protests?
- In the GDR the churches were the one institution the state did not wholly control, so their rooms were where an alternative could be spoken aloud before it could be walked.
Historical Context
His sermons of 4 and 5 October 1989 fall in the last weeks in which the GDR was still governing Weimar.
For forty-five years Weimar was a provincial town that the state could not afford to neglect, because the classics it kept were the pedigree East Germany wanted for itself.
Read more about this period →Quick Facts
German
In Weimar's history
In Weimar's history
Weimar's 1989 does not run to the familiar national calendar. It began at a rigged-looking election count in May, gathered in the churches in October, and reached the street late — on Tuesdays.
The city dates the opening of its peaceful revolution to 4 October 1989 and names his sermons of the 4th and 5th.