Pacifist pastor at political crossroad

The news that the Rev Rainer Eppelmann failed to register as a candidate in time for September's federal election almost certainly heralds the end of one of Germany's most extraordinary political careers. A pacifist pastor who became East Germany's last defence minister, Mr Eppelmann was a key figure in the dissident movement that brought down the Berlin Wall.

After unification, he joined Dr Helmut Kohl's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), becoming one of a handful of prominent easterners in the governing party. But he remained an uncomfortable political figure, unafraid to make enemies within his own party but refusing to pander to the whims of a discontented electorate.

Mr Eppelmann insisted yesterday that, although he shares responsibility for missing the deadline for registration as a candidate in the eastern state of Brandenburg, he hopes to remain active in politics. But the sharp reaction of his party, which is likely to lose a seat on account of the error, suggests he may have to find a new political home.

Like many former dissidents, Mr Eppelmann was sometimes seen as too unworldly for the rough trade of democratic politics. In fact, his experience of life is a great deal broader than most of his career-minded colleagues in the Bundestag.

Born in East Berlin in 1943, he completed an apprenticeship as a bricklayer before studying theology and, as a conscientious objector, spent two years on a state building site instead of completing military service.

As a Protestant pastor, Mr Eppelmann became involved in the tiny movement for freedom in East Germany, offering support to those unable or unwilling to conform to the communist ideal. The ruling party tolerated the churches, not least because their membership was so small and their influence so weak. But the secret police, known as the Stasi, controlled a network of informers in every diocese and even had agents in the most senior church positions.

Although Mr Eppelmann took part in the protests that led to the resignation of Erich Honecker and the opening of the Berlin Wall, he hoped at first to reform East Germany. It was not until the elections in 1990, which produced an overwhelming majority for parties favouring unification with the west, that he joined the CDU. In one of the most thrillingly symbolic appointments of Lothar de Maiziere's short-lived government, the pacifist pastor was made defence minister - with a brief to drastically reduce the strength of the armed forces.

Returned as a Bundestag deputy in Dr Kohl's landslide election victory in December 1990, Mr Eppelmann became a spokesman for eastern interests. But many easterners regarded him, along with other former dissidents, with resentment rather than gratitude for liberating them from dictatorship.

Voters in Brandenburg preferred their Social Democrat prime minister, Manfred Stolpe, a former lay head of the Protestant church who was accused of colluding with the Stasi. Many felt that Mr Stolpe's morally complex history more accurately reflected their own unheroic experience than did the saintly Mr Eppelmann's.

Most of the leaders of the dissident movement have left politics in the nine years since their peaceful revolution. Some, like the biologist Jens Reich, withdrew from the public arena almost as soon as communism was defeated. Others joined Alliance 90, an eastern group that merged with the Greens but failed to make a significant impact on voters.

Tensions between the vociferously anti-communist easterners and left-leaning western Greens led to a number of defections, often to the CDU. But few idealists felt comfortable among the pragmatic, business-friendly Christian Democrats.

Mr Eppelmann contrived to remain loyal both to his party and his conscience, speaking up for easterners but showing little patience with the wave of nostalgia for communism that swept the east in recent years. As he slips out of public recognition, he will find more time for preaching and praying and for pursuing pet projects. But easterners will have lost a principled, political voice and German politics will soon be missing an important, unique dimension.