Reinhard Fuhrmann

Reinhard Fuhrmann was born in Berlin (Prenzlauer Berg) in 1948. In 1968, he began studying philosophy and history at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, where he soon joined a group of opposition students. Together wit the group, he wrote a critical pamphlet on socialism in the GDR, which was reproduced and distributed to like-minded people at other universities. In 1970, the group was targeted by the Gera district administration of State Security. They opened an "operative case" against Fuhrmann.

In July 1971, Fuhrmann - in the middle of his state examinations - was exmatriculated on the initiative of a "full-time unofficial collaborator" of the State Security and banned for life from all universities and technical colleges in the GDR. On 26 July 1972, the 24-year-old fled with a friend from the group via Bulgaria to Yugoslavia. The escape attempt failed, both were arrested by Yugoslav border guards and extradited to Bulgaria the following day. The State Security transferred Fuhrmann from Sofia to ist remand centre in Gera on 1 September 1972.

The purpose of the interrogations there was to gain useful information about the emergence and functioning of opposition student groups by giving Fuhrmann the opportunity to refute the accusation that he had set up a "counter-revolutionary organisation".

On 6 December 1972, the Gera district court sentenced Fuhrmann to two years in prison for "unlawful border crossing in a completed an serious case". From 22 December 1972, he was imprisoned in the Stasi labour camp X at Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. In July 1973, he was transferred to the deportation prison in Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz). From there, he was ransomed by the Federal Republic of Germany and sent to the refugee centre in Giessen on 26 July 1973. Fuhrmann then worked in West Berlin as a freelancer for publishers, as a taxi driver and city guide and, after reuinification, at the Prenzlauer Berg Museum.

Since 2002, he has been working as a tour guide at the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial and for the Coordinating Office of Contemporary Witnesses.