page_title: Vera Lengsfeld
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Vera Lengsfeld / Early life
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. ADN-ZB-Schöps-8.3.1990-Berlin: Vera Wollenberger, Grüne Partei.
context_page_description: Vera Lengsfeld is a German politician. She was a prominent civil rights activist in East Germany and after the German reunification she first represented the Alliance '90/The Greens and then the German Christian Democratic Union in the Bundestag.
context_section_description: Lengsfeld was born in Sondershausen.  Her father was an officer in the Stasi, the East German secret police.  After leaving school she studied Philosophy at Humboldt University Berlin. Following her studies, she worked as a lecturer and researcher at the National Institute of Philosophy in the Academy of Sciences of East Germany. From 1975, she was a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). After a party procedure she was transferred to the Institute for Scientific Information. In 1981 she left the academy and went to work as an editor.
  She became a born-again Christian in 1981, and was active in various civic organizations in East Germany (GDR). She was the co-founder of Pankow Peace Circle in the autumn of 1981, the Environment Library Berlin; Profession group and the Church from Below in 1986. Their commitment included the organization of numerous events of the peace and environmental movements in the GDR, including a "Peace laboratory", "Peace Conference", "Environment Seminar", "Human Rights Seminar," "Church from Below". She was a member of the Continuation Committee for the delegates meeting of the peace group members, who gathered under the title "Specifically for Peace" a year. She was co-organizer of the first human rights seminar held in 1986 in Berlin.
  Due to her public protests against the stationing of Soviet nuclear missiles in East Germany, she was expelled from the SED in 1983 and her profession. In the following years she earned her living as a beekeeper and translator. In 1985 she graduated with a Theology degree.
  In January 1988 she was arrested in advance of the demonstration in honour of Liebknecht and Luxemburg in East Berlin carrying a poster declaring "Every citizen has the right to express his opinion freely and openly" (Article 27 of the Constitution of East Germany) and detained in Berlin Hohenschönhausen prison. She was put on trial by the city district of Lichtenberg on the grounds of "attempted riotous assembly" and although given a custodial sentence she was instead allowed the option of leaving the GDR on a temporary visa effectively deporting her from the country. In February 1988 she went to Cambridge in the United Kingdom where she studied Philosophy of Religion at St. John's College. On the morning of 9 November 1989 she returned to East Germany.
caption: Vera Wollenberger (1990)
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