In all these years, Hans Lindemann has never lost contact with his home country. Even in GDR times he had connections to Zittau. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he did everything in his power to establish new cross-border networks with his eastern neighbors. He also became a member of the Friends of St. Marienthal Monastery in Ostritz. Until recently he read the Zittau edition of the SZ with great interest.
Hans Lindemann was considered an excellent expert on Eastern Europe and a gifted organizer with extensive connections. The highly regarded international congresses in Germany, Belgium and the Czech Republic are still fondly remembered. The conferences in Hejnice, Czech Republic, aroused great media interest in 2005 and 2006. Likewise the conferences in March 2008 in Ostritz / St.Marienthal on the subject of “The Neisse as a river of fate for Germans, Poles, Czechs and Greeks” as well as large events in Dresden. He always attached great importance to the fact that teachers, students and pupils could also take part in the conferences.
Fled to West Berlin
Born on August 2, 1928 in Zittau, Hans Lindemann grew up in Reichenau (today Bogatynia / Poland). His father ran the second largest dye works in Upper Lusatia there. In June 1945 the family was evicted. Hans Lindemann passed his Abitur in Leipzig in 1947, but was not allowed to study law because of his “upper-class origins”. He worked as a commissioned public prosecutor until 1951, but had to flee to West Berlin in November. He had secretly worked for the investigative committee of liberal lawyers and helped five political prisoners to escape from the prisons in Zwickau and Waldheim in Saxony using forged papers. Helping others remained a lifelong credo for him.
Lindemann studied economics and political science at the University of Frankfurt / Main, the Free University of Berlin and the German University for Politics in West Berlin. In 1955 he was awarded the Theodor Heuss Prize. From 1962 on, he worked for Radio Deutsche Welle in Cologne, most recently as head of the central political / economic department.
For Hans Lindemann, the European idea stood above everything he did. As a bridge builder to the east and west, he will also be remembered by the people in Upper Lusatia who knew and were able to experience him.
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