From 1967 Ehrhart Neubert was also taking part in various informal discussion groups, focusing on theology, sociology and the interface between them. He was sympathetic to the civil right demands of Robert Havemann, who was seen by the regime as a high-profile political dissident. By 1979 Neubert was participating actively in Peace Groups of the Evangelical Students' Association and, during then 1980s, in other peace circles. He found himself increasingly in conflict both with the state authorities and with the inherently collaborationist leaderships of the official evangelical churches which were keen to retain a level of recognition and toleration from the party leadership. Neubert also produced a number of quasi-political sociological and theological studies: some of his work appeared in West Germany under the pseudonym "Christian Joachim".[5]
During East Germany's Peaceful Revolution, Neubert was a co-founder of the Democratic Awakening movement, founded in 1989 in his apartment.[6] He contributed to the new party's programme and served as its first vice-chairman.[6] He represented Democratic Awakening at several of the East German Round Table sessions[5] and served on various related investigatory commissions.[2] A (relatively) young fellow activist in Democratic Awakening was Angela Merkel who later became Chancellor of Germany.[5] Finding himself out of sympathy with what he saw at the time a shift towards the political right,[7] in January 1990 Neubert resigned from Democratic Awakening. The crunch issue appears to have been the issue of its developing political alliances, notably with the CDU (party): Merkel stayed.[6] After reunification, which formally took place in the late summer of 1990, in 1992 he became a member of the Brandenburg branch of the Alliance 90 (political party).[2]
In 1976 the Stasi had attempted, without success, to recruit Neubert:[5] sixteen years later, as a member of the "Law and reconciliation" initiative, Neubert stood up for the rights of Stasi victims and for fair and consistent treatment of those involved in the endlessly complex interactions of the Stasi and the Protestant churches in former East Germany.[8] In 1992 the Alliance 90 group in the Brandenburg Landtag ("regional parliament") nominated him as a member of the Stolpe inquiry committee. The committee concluded its work in 1994 (although many of the matters it investigated would not be so quickly laid to rest).[9] In 1996 Ehrhart Neubart re-joined the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands/CDU party).[2] That same year, at the age of 46, he received his doctorate from the Free University of Berlin for a dissertation on the history of political opposition in the German Democratic Republic from 1949 to 1989.[10] In 1998 the work was published, repackaged into a volume of approximately 1000 pages.[11]
Erhart Neubert retired in 2005, but still filled in as a Lutheran minister in the Limlingerode area. He married Hildigund (born Hildigund Falcke)[14] in 1987: she shares his background as an East German opposition activist with evangelical church connections, also sharing his commitment since 1990 to researching and recording the dictatorship.[15] She later served for ten years as State Commissioner for Stasi records in Thuringia.
Neubert died in Limlingerode, Germany on 17 November 2024, at the age of 84.[16]
^Ehrhart Neubert (April 1998). Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR 1949-1989 (Forschungen zur DDR-Gesellschaft). Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin (paperback edition). ISBN978-3-861-53163-0.
^"Erhart Neubert (Pfarrer, 74 Jahre )". This source includes a telling picture of Ehrhart and Hildigund Neubert with a homemade "Demo-banner". Akademie für Ost-West-Begegnungen e.V., Berlin. 2014. Retrieved 25 January 2016.
