​About The House
The House of Democracy and Human Rights (Haus der Demokratie und Menschenrechte, HdDM) stands as a symbol of the peaceful revolution of 1989 in Germany. It played a pivotal role in representing the citizen movements that emerged during this period and became a space for public discourse and activism. Today, the HdDM continues to serve as a hub for democratic engagement, civil rights, and human rights initiatives.
The citizens' movements of the peaceful revolution of autumn 1989 are represented in the German public by three legacies: the draft constitution of the Central Round Table, the House of Democracy and last but not least the symbolic value of the name Bündnis 90/Die Grünen.
Even though the names "Bündnis 90" and "Die Grünen" by far do not cover the entire spectrum of the organisations represented in the House of Democracy, one thing is expressed in their combination: the aim of the citizen movement is not to artificially prolong its special and parallel existence caused by the circumstances of autumn 1989, but to participate together and in new structures in the political discourse in the new all-German democracy in order to intervene in it with their experiences.
Under pressure from the major West German parties, the draft constitution of the Central Round Table was not able to play the role in the unification process it was intended to play. But it is precisely for this reason that this draft constitution with its Article 132, which refers to the German unification process under Article 23 of the Basic Law, is a permanent monument to the democratic deficits of a purely administrative unification process that was carried out via a monetary union. For the same reason, this draft constitution became the stimulus for the first all-German citizens' movement, the Kuratorium für einen "demokratisch verfassten Bund deutscher Länder" (Board of Trustees for a "democratically constituted federation of German Länder"), founded in June 1990.
His decision at the first meeting not to transform the Ministry of State Security into an "Office for National Security", but to dissolve it at all, made it clear that the power structures of the SED should be broken and not only reformed - as in the case of the transformation of the SED into the PDS.
After all, the party still operating under the name SED/PDS at that time was prepared to acknowledge the revolutionary situation at least to the extent that it reacted to the decision of the Round Table that the new citizen movements should be equipped with a minimum of spatial and technical working possibilities: Following a corresponding decision by the GDR Council of Ministers, it made the house of the SED district leadership in Berlin-Mitte available to the citizens' movements for their work.
Thus the "Initiative for Peace and Human Rights", the "New Forum", "Democracy Now", the "Democratic Awakening", the "Green League", the "Green Party", the "United Left" and many others were able to set up offices there from which they could coordinate their work, produce publications and carry out their public relations work at all.
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Das Haus der Demokratie war die einzige materielle Basis, mit der die Bürgerbewegungen in den Wahlkampf eintreten konnten – gegen die überwältigende Konkurrenz der westdeutschen Parteien, die hinter ihren ostdeutschen Pendants standen, einschließlich der SDP, die sich inzwischen der westlichen „großen Partei“ geöffnet hatte, indem sie ihren Namen anpasste.
A first highlight of these activities was the negotiations on the Modrow government's proposal to form a "government of national responsibility" consisting of citizens' movements and the bloc parties represented in the GDR Council of Ministers. Negotiations which took place at the end of January 1990 in the House of Democracy with the participation of the representatives of the Eastern SPD ("SDP"), before the latter separated from the electoral alliance formed in October 1989 with a view to the People's Chamber elections in the spring of 1990.
The House of Democracy was the only material basis with which the citizens' movements could enter the election campaign - against the overwhelming competition of the West German parties that stood behind their East German counterparts - including the SDP, which in the meantime had opened up to the Western "big party" by adapting its name.
The poor performance in this election was also due to this imbalance of power. But it also proved that the importance of citizen movements must not first be measured by electoral success. As local and temporary initiatives, they need an institution that functions differently from a party headquarters. They need a stable free space for encounters, where discourse and communication are not subject to the prevailing opinion and media cycles, nor to the calendar of election periods.
This is exactly what the House of Democracy wants to be. By taking up the name of the New Forum, the largest citizens' movement of autumn 1989, one could say that the House of Democracy is the other forum, the forum for forming opinions in the non-party and inter-party space, which proved to be the politically decisive one that autumn. Such an exceptional situation cannot be artificially conceded unlimited duration, as some exponents of the civil movement still seem to have in mind
Aber auch in unserer von Parteidominanz geprägten Öffentlichkeit braucht die Demokratie Räume der Entspannung und ungestörten Kommunikation, in denen weder die Marketing- und Quoteninteressen der Medienindustrie noch die ungezügelten Emotionen der Stammtische die Gespräche engagierter Bürger beeinflussen oder gar verhindern können. Wie sehr das Engagement für ein solches Haus der Demokratie auch eine Frage öffentlicher politischer Moral ist, zeigt die Tatsache, dass es in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland nach wie vor möglich ist, Rückerstattungsansprüche zugunsten der Nachfolgeunternehmen der Hermann-Göring-Werke gegen die Bürgerbewegungen geltend zu machen, ohne eine öffentliche Brandmarkung befürchten zu müssen. In diesem Licht gesehen, erinnert die Existenz des Hauses der Demokratie auch ständig an die notwendige Priorität der Menschen- und Bürgerrechte aller – und damit auch an die historischen Bezugspunkte dieser Demokratie gegenüber den Eigentumsinteressen Einzelner, Eigentumsinteressen, die im Falle des Hauses der Demokratie zudem historisch und öffentlich diskreditiert sind. Denn „Haus der Demokratie“ bedeutet immer auch „Haus der Geschichte dieser Demokratie“.