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Erika Steinbach

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File:Erika Steinbach2.jpg
Erika Steinbach, Member of Parliament

Erika Steinbach (born July 25, 1943 as Erika Hermann) is a German conservative politician who has been representing the CDU and the state of Hesse as a member of the Parliament of Germany, the Bundestag, since 1990. She is one of two direct candidates elected from Frankfurt. She has also been president of the Federation of Expellees since 1998 (succeeding Fritz Wittmann), and besides that is a member of the national board of her party, the CDU-Bundesvorstand (since 2000), the board of the Goethe-Institut, the board of the national broadcasting company ZDF, and the board of the Landsmannschaft Westpreußen. She also is chairwoman of the Centre Against Expulsions.

Since 2005, she is a member of the parliamentary committee for human rights and humanitarian aid and spokesperson for human rights and humanitarian aid of the CDU/CSU faction. Erika Steinbach has studied music and been a member of concert orchestras before becoming a fulltime politician.

Because of the widely discussed plan to build a centre and monument against forced migration which her organisation is promoting, she has been especially well-known in some Central and East European countries that were subject to German occupation and genocide.

File:Merkel-steinbach.jpg
Chancellor Angela Merkel is greeted by Erika Steinbach at the annually reception of the Bund der Vertriebenen in Berlin in February 2006

Biography

She was born in German occupied Poland in 1943 in the Polish village of Rumia(renamed by German occupiers as Rahmel). Her father, Wilhelm Karl Hermann, was a Luftwaffe Feldwebel (Non-commissioned officer in the German air force) from Hanau in Hesse, western-central Germany, whose family was originally from Silesia[1]. He was sent to Rahmel in 1941 and served as a technician at the local airport during the war, while her mother Erika (née Grote) lived in Berlin but visited the town occasionally. In January 1944 her father was sent to the Eastern Front. In January 1945, three months before the advancing Soviet army reached the area, Steinbach's mother decided to return to Germany and went to Schleswig-Holstein together with her children[2]. After several years of wandering through various parts of Germany, in 1948 the family moved to Berlin, where Steinbach's grandfather had become a mayor of one of the districts.

The following year Wilhelm Karl Hermann returned from Soviet captivity and the family moved to his homeland in Hanau. There Steinbach finished her education and started studying violin play. In 1967 she had to abandon her music career due to serious bone illness. In 1972, after nine years of going out, she married Helmut Steinbach, the conductor of a local youth symphonic orchestra. She then graduated from a school of civil administration and moved to Frankfurt, where she started working for a Communal Evaluation Office. In 1974 he became the head of a sub-unit of that organization responsible for computerization of all public libraries in Hesse. The same year she joined the Frankfurt branch of the CDU party. In 1977 she was elected a chairman of the city council and held that post until 1990, when she was elected a member of the Bundestag. She became noted by the press for the first time when she was among the strongest opponents of German ratification of the border treaty with Poland. In 1994 she joined the Federation of Expellees and in May of 1998 became the head of that organization.

As Steinbach's parents had had no roots of any kind in the area of her birthplace, had been merely deployed there as part of their duties in the occupation forces and her birthplace was an accident[3], her legitimation to speak on behalf of the German expellees has been often questioned[4][5]. However, as the 1953 German Federal Expellee Law includes all categories of people who had to leave for whatever reason the areas held by Germany during World War II, she has official expellee status[6].

One of her main aims is to build a controversial monumental Centre Against Expulsions (Template:Lang-de) in Berlin, devoted to the victims of forced population migrations or ethnic cleansing in Europe, particularly to the Germans displaced after World War II. She is the chairwoman (jointly with Peter Glotz) of the recently created foundation of the Centre. The initiative, supported by the CDU/CSU faction in German Parliament, has caused much controversy, both in Germany and abroad. Steinbach was re-elected as president of the Bund der Vertriebenen by an overwhelming majority on May 8, 2004[7]

References

Inline:
  1. ^ Template:De icon"Erika Steinbach bestreitet Sinneswandel". Die Welt. Retrieved 2005-11-03.
  2. ^ Template:Pl icon Szubarczyk, Piotr (2004). "Erika z Rumi" (PDF). Biuletyn IPN. 50 (4): 49–53. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Blum was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Template:De icon Gabriele Lesser (2003). "Zentrum gegen Versöhnung". die tageszeitung. 58 (12). {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  5. ^ Template:De icon Jörg Lau (2004). "Gedenken mit Schmiss". Die Zeit (23). {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  6. ^ Template:De icon Bundestag (1953). "Gesetz über die Angelegenheiten der Vertriebenen und Flüchtlinge". Juris.de. German Ministry of Justice. Retrieved February 28. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  7. ^ Template:De icon"BdV-Präsidentin Erika Steinbach mit überwältigender Mehrheit wiedergewählt". Bund der Vertriebenen website. BdV. 2004. Retrieved May 8. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
General:
  1. Template:Pl icon Danuta Zagrodzka (2003). "Erika Steinbach: tygrysica wypędzonych". Gazeta Wyborcza. 272 (47/WO): 34. ISSN 0860-908x. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
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