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Freya Klier

Freya Klier

Webseite von Freya Klier

References:

  • Klier, Freya: Abreiß-Kalender (1988)
  • Klier, Freya: Lüg Vaterland (1990)

Born in 1950 in Dresden, Klier witnessed at a young age the arrest of her father, who was sentenced to one year in prison in 1953. After 1966, her 17-year-old brother was found guilty of "slandering the state" and was sentenced to four years in prison. At the age of 18, she tried to leave the GDR with a Swedish merchant ship. She was betrayed and sentenced to 16 months in prison, of which she served a total of 12 months. After working odd jobs, completing a training program for actors, and studying to be a director, she worked at various theaters in the GDR beginning in 1982. Almost all of her productions excited the criticism of the party leaders and were therefore discontinued after a short time or restaged by others. Beginning in the early 1980s, Klier worked for the independent peace movement under the protection granted by the Protestant churches in the GDR.

In 1985, she was expelled from the GDR's Theatre Association and forbidden to work. Alongside her former life-partner Stephan Krawczyk, she staged socially critical productions mainly in churches and community spaces before numerous spectators. At the same time, she was working on a book based on interviews that addressed the educational system of the GDR. The Ministry for State Security (Stasi) attempted to disrupt her "anti-state" tendencies by fining her and conducting other supposedly subversive measures. After Freya Klier had protested against the suppression of an official march for the murdered communist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in January 1988, she was arrested and taken to the remand prison in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen.

Under the threat of a multi-year prison sentence and on the advice of her lawyer Wolfgang Schnur, who later revealed himself as an unofficial collaborator (IM) of the State Security Service, she signed an exit visa. After her expatriation, she lived and worked in West Berlin. Through her numerous books and films, sKlier insists on a critical revisitation of the communist and Nazi dictatorships.