Christoph Dieckmann

Christoph Dieckmann (born 22 January 1956) is a German journalist, commentator and author. Before 1990 he grew up and, as a young man, built his career in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany): much of his most thoughtful writing continues to relate to those times, along with the tensions and frictions that still resonate from the division of Germany between 1949 and 1990. Biography Christoph Dieckmann was born in Rathenow, a small town in the flat lands to the west of Potsdam and Berlin. He was the middle of his parents' three sons. Hans-Joachim Dieckmann, his father, was a Lutheran pastor, a man of strong principle who never allowed himself or his family to be seduced by the party's "socialist" group-think. His mother, Annelies, was a teacher. He grew up in the Harz region, first in the little village Dingelstedt am Huy (west of Magdeburg) and later in Sangerhausen. His father nevertheless remained networked with Lutheran pastors in and around East Berlin. As a result of these contacts, when in 1990 Christoph Dieckmann, by this time an ambitious young journalist, needed to improve his English fast, he was tutored in the language by Herlind Kasner (born Herlind Jentzsch), a retired specialist English teacher at the East Berlin Missionary House. His teacher was married to the pastor Horst Kasner. The Kasners were the parents of Angela Merkel. As a teenager he was prevented from undertaking his school leaving exam (Abitur) which under other circumstances would have opened the way to university level education. When the family had lived in the little village of Dingelstedt am Huy the fact that the pastor's son never joined the Free German Youth ("Freie Deutsche Jugend" / Young Communists) or the "Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation" was not an obvious problem. "Christoph does not belong to the socialist youth association", his teacher had written to his mother, "but he never stands aside when it's a question of working together." Things were different when the family moved to Sangerhausen, which was (and is) a town, and where the party was evidently more omnipresent. The education officer at the school refused him permission to take part in the Abitur exams, regardless of recommendations submitted and the good marks achieved in class. With no prospect of moving on to university, in 1972 Dieckmann therefore embarked on a traineeship at the Langenau film academy as a cine-projectionist.