In late 1985/early 1986, the Initiative for Peace and Human Rights (Initiative Frieden und Menschenrechte, IFM) formed in Berlin. Modelled on *Charter 77, the IFM would become one of the most influential opposition groups in the GDR in the late 1980s. Gerd and Ulrike Poppe were among its founding members, as were Wolfgang Templin, Werner Fischer, Bärbel Bohley, Peter Grimm, Reinhard Weißhuhn and Ralf Hirsch. The IFM resolutely championed the cause of democracy, freedom, human rights and the rule of law in the GDR. It endorsed proclamations from the East European opposition and campaigned for the release of political prisoners. However, its members also discussed solutions to the “German question”, an issue which most East German opposition figures thought could only be addressed within the framework of a “Common European home” in view of the confrontation between the two blocks and the Brezhnev doctrine, which still held at the time.

In 1988, the IFM was nearly paralysed by the expulsion of some of its best-known representatives, such as Wolfgang Templin, Bärbel Bohley and Werner Fischer in the wake of the official march marking the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, a massive event held in each year in January. Opposition activists and would-be emigrants participating in the 1988 march had carried banners with a slogan borrowed from Luxemburg: “Freedom is always the freedom of those who think differently”. More than 160 people were arrested, and several prominent opposition figures were subsequently deported to West Germany.

Poppe initiated, wrote, co-wrote and co-signed numerous open letters, appeals/proclamations and samizdat publications in the 1980s. To provide a few examples: Robert Havemann’s open letter to Brezhnev (1981), the response to the *Prague Appeal published in samizdat on 8 June 1985, the “Statement on the 30th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution” (1986), the IFM’s 1987 letter to *Charter 77 and the periodicals “Grenzfall”, “Ostkreuz” and “Spuren”.

In March 1989, Berlin’s IFM opened its membership up to people throughout the GDR. While this did not lead to a flood of new members at the time, it did make it possible for the IFM, which had several years of opposition work behind it, to act as one of the key national groups the following autumn. The IFM became a political force driving the East German revolution, along with new groups like the New Forum, Democracy Now, Democratic Awakening, the Böhlen Platform/United Left and the Social Democratic Party in the GDR (SDP). Poppe was among those seen as leading figures in the popular movement against the dictatorship in 1989/90. He participated at the Central Round Table as an IFM spokesperson from December 1989 to March 1990, where, as the founder of the group working on a new constitution for the GDR, he advocated the adoption of elements of direct democracy and called for German unity, which he said should be attained by convening a German national assembly to draft a new constitution for the whole of Germany (in line with Article 146 of West Germany’s Basic Law). When representatives of the opposition were appointed as ministers without portfolios in the government led by Hans Modrow, Gerd Poppe was among them.

After the GDR’s first democratic elections, Gerd Poppe took up a seat in the national legislature, the Volkskammer, where he acted as deputy parliamentary manager of the Alliance 90/The Greens parliamentary group. In this period, Poppe began to make a name for himself as a foreign policy expert, a field in which he had become interested earlier in the decade. After unification, he acted as foreign policy spokesperson for the party Alliance 90/The Greens while serving as a member of the German Bundestag (1990–Sept. 1998). He also represented his parliamentary group on the Foreign Affairs Committee. In addition to his activities is these areas, he had always been active in the cause of revealing the truths about the history of the communist dictatorship. He had published papers on the history of opposition in the GDR and served on the inquiry commissions of the German Bundestag investigating “the history and consequences of the SED dictatorship” (1992–94) and the issue of “overcoming the consequences of the SED dictatorship in the process of German unity” (1995–98). Poppe was an honorary member of the governing body of the Federal Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Eastern Germany, which was founded in 1998.

The primary focus of Poppe’s work was the protection and promotion of human rights and civil rights. Given the appreciation and respect that his activities in this area had earned him across party boundaries, it was almost inevitable that he would be appointed as the first Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Assistance at the Federal Foreign Office when that post was created in November of 1998. He served in that office until March 2003. In assigning Gerd Poppe to this post, the government chose to fill it with a rigorous champion of respect for and compliance with human rights with decades of personal first-hand experience of what it means when a dictatorial regime tramples on human rights. From April 2003 until the spring of 2005, Poppe worked with the Heinrich Böll Foundation as a consultant on projects aimed at supporting democratisation in Russia and the Southern Caucasus. His work in this area could be said to have rounded off his political and oppositional biography in a way that very few former opposition activists were lucky enough to duplicate.

Gerd Poppe died on 29 march 2025.