Hubertus Knabe

Hubertus Knabe (born in 1959 in Unna, North Rhine-Westphalia) is a German historian, human rights activist and the scientific director of the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial, a museum and memorial in a notorious former Stasi torture prison in Berlin. Knabe is noted for several works on oppression in the former communist states of Eastern Europe, particularly in East Germany. He early became involved with Green politics, and was active in the Green Party in Germany.

Knabe's parents fled East Germany in 1959, and Knabe hence was born and grew up in West Germany. His father was the noted ecologist Wilhelm Knabe, a co-founder and former chairman of the German Greens. Hubertus Knabe was active in the peace movement, and in 1978, he founded a committee in support of Rudolf Bahro, a German philosopher imprisoned in East Germany. Because of his political activities, he was declared persona non grata in East Germany between 1980 and 1987.

Hubertus Knabe served as press spokesman of the Green Party in Bremen from 1983. He obtained a doctoral degree in history at the Freie Universität Berlin.

From 1992 to 2000, he worked in the research department of the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Archives.

In 2001, he was appointed scientific director of the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial.

Hubertus Knabe is committed to a consistent work on coming to terms with the Communist crimes committed on German soil: "Not until the Communist dictatorship is as firmly in mind in Germany as the criminal regime of the National Socialists will we really have succeeded in coming to terms with the legacy of Stasi Minister Erich Mielke".

Hubertus Knabe has called for a more outspoken anti-communism in German society, and has particularly called upon the SPD party to identify with its anti-communist tradition as part of its democratic legacy. He has pointed out that social democrats were the first victims of the communist dictatorship in East Germany. Every democrat is an anti-communist, according to Knabe.