Erika Steinbach
Erika Steinbach (born July 25, 1943) is a German politician (CDU). She is a member of the Bundestag (since 1990) elected from the state of Hesse and president of the Federation of Expellees (since 1998). She is also a member of the board of the Goethe-Institut, the national broadcasting company ZDF and the Landsmannschaft Westpreußen.
She was born in Poland, village of Rumia (then Rahmel in the province Danzig-West Prussia, on territory recently annexed by Third Reich following the German invasion of 1939). Her father was a Luftwaffe officer from Hanau in western Germany, who was stationed there during World War II. After the war Steinbach's family returned to Hanau, where she studied music and was a member of concert orchestras. Steinbach's status as an expellee, and hence her suitability to head the Federation of Expellees, has been questioned and remains somewhat controversial. She is, however, according to German law legally an expellee.
One of her main aims is to build a monumental center against forced migration in the centre of Berlin, devoted to German victims of World War II. She is a representative of the newly founded Centre Against Expulsions (Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen). This initiative, supported by the CDU/CSU faction in the parliament, has caused controversy. Opponents of the proposed form of Centre object to emphasizing only German suffering; others see it as an inappropriate counter-balance to the Holocaust memorial. In the petition "For a critical and enlightened debate about the past" historians expressed concerns the centre would establish and popularize a one-sided image of the past, without historical context. Well-known intellectuals and politicians, including Germans Günter Grass and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, in 2003 expressed support for a centre devoted to all expelled during the 20th century, located in some place connected with expulsions, e.g. Wroclaw. However, Steinbach claims the Centre will represent the suffering of other nations as well. "All victims of genocide and expulsion need a place in our hearts and in the historical memory. Human rights are indivisible," the Centre points out on its official home page.
In the German and Polish public, dispute was sometimes fierce. Reminders of past evils occurred as arguments or insults. The Polish newspaper Wprost published a cover photo-montage of Erika Steinbach in an SS uniform (photo). In the same controversy, Steinbach sued the German journalist Gabriele Lesser for defamations related to an article published September 19, 2003, in the daily Kieler Nachrichten.
Steinbach was re-elected as president of the Bund der Vertriebenen by an overwhelming majority on May 8, 2004. [1]