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Heinrich George | Helmut Kind | Karl Heinrich | Ewald Ernst | Kurt Müller | Alfred Weiland | Arno Wend | Helmut Brandt | Georg Dertinger | Max Fechner | Karl Wilhelm Fricke | Wolfgang Harich | Walter Janka | Walter Linse | Paul Merker | Sigrid Paul | Rudolf Bahro | Heinz Brandt | Jürgen Fuchs | Gerulf Pannach | Michael Sallmann | Hans-Joachim Helwig-Wilson | Bärbel Bohley | Freya Klier | Stephan Krawczyk | Vera Lengsfeld | Ulrike Poppe
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 Rudolf Bahro was one of the most famous communist dissidents in the late GDR. Born in 1935 in Silesian Bad Flinsberg, Bahro studied Marxist philosophy at East Berlin's Humboldt University in the 1950’s and became a member of the Socialist Unity Party (SED). Subsequently, he was mainly active as an editor, most recently as deputy editor of the newspaper "Forum". After publishing a critical piece about the East German theater writer Volker Braun, he was discharged from his post and worked as a department manager in a rubber factory in Berlin-Weißensee since 1967. In 1968 he protested against the suppression of the so-called “Prague Spring” by the invasion of Warsaw Pact countries into Czechoslovakia. Since that time he was under constant surveillance by the Ministry for State Security (Stasi). In 1974, his ex-wife informed the Stasi, that Bahro was writing critical piece, and subsequently, the acceptance of his dissertation at the Technical University Leuna-Merseburg was thwarted. Bahro finally wrote down his criticism of the "actually existing socialism" and of its Russian-Asiatic roots in his book "The Alternative.". He smuggled the manuscript into the Federal Republic, where it was published - partly pre-printed in "Der Spiegel" – in 1977. At the same time he gave several television interviews, which made him internationally famous overnight. Immediately thereafter, in August 1977, Bahro was arrested and sent to the remand prison in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, where he sat in custody for ten months. In June 1978 the Court of Berlin sentenced him to eight years in prison for alleged "intelligence work" He came to the special prison Bautzen II. Under the pressure of international protests Bahro was released as part of an amnesty in October 1979 and forced to emigrate to the West. In the Federal Republic of Germany Bahro was a founding member of the Green Party and , a member of its National Executive Committee (1982) but he left the party in 1985. In late 1989 he returned to East Berlin, where he called for the SED, at a special party congress, to reverse to economic and ecological policies In 1990 he received a professorship at the Humboldt University where he founded the Institute for Social Ecology. In the main auditorium of the Humboldt University, he gave lecture which took place amid great public interest. In 1997 Bahro died of blood cancer in Berlin at the age of 62. |
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