Thomas Oberender: Gabriele Stötzer is a writer, artist and activist. She was born in a village near Erfurt [Thuringia, then in East Germany], began vocational training as a medical lab technician, later did her school-leaving certificate and studied German and art education at the Pädagogische Hochschule. In 1976, her last year of studies, she and two other students were expelled from the university on political grounds because of a solidarity campaign for a fellow student, and that same year she was imprisoned for collecting signatures for Wolf Biermann. She went to Hoheneck prison, and later ran one of the few independent galleries in the GDR, the Galerie im Flur. She became a visual artist herself and founded a women’s group which staged underground exhibitions, performances and films. Gabriele Stötzer is distinguished by her irrepressible individuality, her multifaceted oeuvre of texts, films, photography and objects, as well as her gift for gathering a constantly revolving group of free agents around her over many years, and—in the face of intense repression—her unwavering determination not to go to the West but to stay and struggle for a different life in East Germany.

Ms Stötzer, in 1976 you organised a petition to protest Biermann’s...