Hartmut Gründler

Granted leave, from November 1965 to fall 1967, for teaching German classes first at the Goethe Institute and after this within the French-German youth exchange program, he pursued a study of pedagogy, educational psychology and general linguistics at Tübingen and Besançon and graduated in 1969 (Magister Artium).

According to the principle "everyone knows that everyone knows" he moreover developed an unusual communications network, in which he added the addressees of the copies circulated in each case in his numerous publications and appeals usually addressed to several multiplicators and decision makers at a time.

His first "conflict partner", Federal Secretary of Research Hans Matthöfer, responded to Gründler’s demand for discussion within the "Citizens’ Dialogue Nuclear Energy" conceded to him in July 1975, finally confessed, however, to the long-term execution of the atomic program in a letter in June 1976.

On November 16, 1977 (the Day of Prayer and Repentance) Gründler burned himself in Hamburg during the SPD Party Congress out of protest against "the continued governmental misinformation" in the energy policy, particularly concerning the permanent disposal of nuclear waste.

And in the "appendix" to this appeal, addressed directly to the Federal Chancellor, he wrote: "I choose the last and utmost form of protest, and instead of the lighthouse [to supplement: the "granite one", planned for three weeks] I nevertheless still use the sandcastle at least for a fire signal.

Hartmut Gründler - after a planned procession with the catafalque through different places of his activity in the German Federal Republic had been forbidden by Hamburg authorities - was buried at the Tübingen Bergfriedhof on November 30, 1977 under participation of approximately 1000 mourners from at home and abroad.

In his still existing Working Group for Protection of Life the collection of numerous documents from Gründler’s creative career as well as from the aftermath has been archived and is being supplemented and enriched by contemporary testimonies, also as the basis of an extended biography.