Gabriele Stötzer
Artist
Biography
Gabriele Stötzer (born 1953 in Emleben) is a German writer and artist. While studying in Erfurt she collected signatures in November 1976 against the expatriation of Wolf Biermann; she was arrested by the Stasi and sentenced to a year in prison, which she served in Hoheneck, where she resolved to become a writer. Refusing to leave for the West, she wrote autobiographical and experimental texts seeking a specifically female mode of expression, ran the Galerie im Flur in Erfurt until it was shut down by the Stasi in 1981, and in 1984 co-founded the Künstlerinnengruppe Erfurt. Her work spans writing, performance, Super 8 film, graphics and weaving. In December 1989 she was among the initiators of the first occupation of a Stasi headquarters in the GDR, in Erfurt.