Eppelmann: That’s a very complicated question. If by “staying clean” you’re asking whether one could live in the GDR without making compromises, then I’d have to say: no, it was impossible. It’s part of human life, part of life for people in the GDR as well as in the old Federal Republic, to recognize that not all of my visions, not all of my wishes, not all of my ideas will be fulfilled or can be realized. I must therefore consider what I would like to have alongside that which seems possible and then find a compromise. To me, that’s not sordid in and of itself. I would not want to judge that as morally negative. For me, that applies only when the person who makes such a compromise does so at the expense of someone else and to his own advantage. That, I believe, was not necessary. There is for me, for example, a very decisive point at which I ask: Where is there actual guilt? Guilt that also requires expiation, where it’s perhaps possible for forgiveness to follow, provided there’s an admission of guilt. Probably not forgetting, we can’t prescribe that, but forgiving. I concede to every person – for who, after all, wants to die a hero or a saint or a martyr? – that you have to make compromises if you don’t want to live like Robinson Crusoe. Together with others, and this extends all the way into the family, that is, into the very community of those who claim to love each other – here, too, one must enter into compromises. But these compromises must not deprive others of their life opportunities.
Now I return to the topic at hand. In my opinion it was most definitely the right and the duty of the Protestant church to make compromises with the regime in the GDR, in order to preserve or even expand life opportunities, faith opportunities for Christians. But if that happened in a way that harmed individuals, that harmed others, then that compromise went beyond a limit that it really shouldn’t have been allowed to cross. A limit that should be crossed least of all by a church that proclaims: Let us all be followers of this Jesus of Nazareth. For me, that would be another qualitative difference between all the others – all parties, organizations, and so on and so forth – and this church of Jesus Christ.
Deutschlandfunk: How do you assess the growing criticism, especially by Social Democrats, of the work of the Gauck Agency? There’s talk of inquisition, of dime novels that are being written, of the reversal of the principles of a state under the rule of law.
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