When the Soviet periodical “Sputnik” was banned in the GDR in 1988, Stötzer wrote of the pathology ward and described the autopsy of a man as a metaphor for the dissection awaiting the system. Shortly thereafter, in the autumn of 1989, events began to unfold in a dynamic that would once have been inconceivable, or rather, a dynamic borne forward by numerous men and women of courage. A broad citizens movement took shape. The group Erfurt New Forum (Neues Forum) came together around the painter Matthias Büchner. Gabriele Stötzer joined the psychologist Kerstin Schön and others to form the group Women for Change (Frauen für Veränderung). That autumn, Gabriele Stötzer spoke at the demonstrations in Erfurt and, in January 1990, she arranged for Wolf Biermann to perform on Erfurt’s Domplatz.

On the evening of 3 December, the leaders of the New Forum, meeting in Grünheide near Berlin, learned that the official Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski, a key figure in the GDR’s efforts to acquire foreign currency, had absconded. Recognising the need to prevent the destruction of files and embezzlement of foreign currency, the civil rights activists called their comrades in arms in all districts, urging them to prevent the guilty from shifting the blame or concealing the truth of what had happened. Matthias Büchner phoned Manfred Ruge, who would later become the lord mayor of Erfurt. The call to action continued to be transmitted across the city.

Gabriele Stötzer recalls: “Kerstin Schön woke me up quite early on the morning of the 4th of December. She rang the doorbell at around 5 am, all excited, telling me that something had to be done, the Stasi had been burning their records for days, and it had to be stopped. Erfurt’s leading civil rights activists were in Berlin, so the two women made a spontaneous decision: “There would have to be an occupation of the Stasi district headquarters.” Joined by Sabine Fabian and Claudia Bogenhardt, they marched into the town hall, pushed their way into the town council session, which was holding an extraordinary vote to select a mayor, and insisted that the Stasi’s destruction of records be stopped. “It was quite a strange feeling: the four of us women standing stand there in front of those incredulously gaping representatives after making this peremptory demand. The representatives seemed impressed. They announced that the municipal councillor for internal affairs would engage in talks with us.”

While Kerstin Schön and Sabine Fabian were out mobilising workers from the bigger factories to demonstrate in front of the Stasi headquarters in Erfurt’s Andreasstraße, Claudia Bogenhardt and Gabriele Stötzer convinced the district prosecutor to call in the competent military prosecutor from Berlin. “It was going to take too long for him to get there, so we insisted that the Erfurt’s district public prosecutor come with us, and he did.” When we arrived at Andreasstraße, the Stasi complex there was surrounded by people, and with the crowds pressing against the doors, the guards had opened them, letting the first people in. Those who had made it inside were walking through the building from one floor to the next: they were calm and cautious, but the scenes that met them were full of chaos and confusion. There were files everywhere, shredded paper, paper was burning in furnaces in the basements. We sealed off the rooms, Stasi personnel were running around frantically but were not allowed to enter them again.

When the military prosecutor arrived later that afternoon, he sealed the doors officially. Civil rights activists arranged to have the rooms guarded and keep the files safe. But it was first and foremost those four courageous women who made history that day, with their spontaneous decision to arrange the first occupation of an MfS district headquarters.

During the period in which Gabriele Stötzer was active every day on the Citizens’ Council and Citizens’ Committee, she and her group of women artists occupied a very run down, four-story building in the old quarter of Erfurt and founded the Erfurter Kunsthaus there, a contemporary art gallery. Her 1995 book “erfurter roulette” provides depiction of the diverging interests and emerging tensions in that context that is both subtle and dramatic.

In 1992, after the GDR’s demise, Gabriele Stötzer was “rehabilitated” by the university and awarded the teaching degree that she had been pursuing when expelled. She travelled to the USA for reading and lecture tours in 1992 and 1994. For a time she also lived and worked in the Netherlands. She continues to write and make art, installations and objects today. The numerous grants awarded to her testify to the regard in which her work is held. In 2013, she was awarded the Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for her engagement on behalf of civil rights in the GDR and for her artistic exploration of experiences of imprisonment and dictatorship.