AH, YOU AGAIN, MR WILD,’ THE lady with the funny name (Mücke means ‘mosquito’) would exclaim when Victor entered her office. ‘What happened? Did you get sacked again?’

Frau Mücke was our link person at the job centre in Essen. She knew us by sight and soon by name, especially after we had got married.

Based on the ‘Radicals Decree’ of 1972, Victor had also been barred as a teacher at government schools. Hence we both tried out various jobs outside the civil service. At regular intervals one of us would appear in Frau Mücke's office to ask for a new job or for unemployment benefits.

My first job, as head of department in adult education, was terminated at the end of the six-month probation period – no reasons given. The next one – after a period of living on the unemployment subsidy – was as personal secretary to the technical director of a large IT company. I remember how I went shopping to find appropriate clothes – a tailored skirt and high-heeled shoes – and put on some make-up, and how my boss was very pleased to have such a cultivated, self-reliant assistant, fluent in both English and French. Yet even before the three months’ probation was ended I was sacked, with immediate effect, and banned from the premises.

My boss was baffled. My organisation was triumphant. It was obvious that state intelligence had informed management. Two days later, I stood at the company gate, distributing pamphlets with political slogans. The party newspaper, Kommunistische Volkszeitungpublished a full-page feature about my case, including photocopies of bills from one or two business dinners my boss had paid for and I had smuggled out. Quite ridiculous, thinking of it now – some 500 deutschmark for one evening, no night club, no major debauchery – but obviously we found such harmless demeanour worthwhile fodder for denouncing ‘capitalism and its state lackeys’.

‘Nach Entlassung Staat beschimpft’ (Reviling the state after getting the sack) was the Westdeutsche Allgemeine 's headline above the report about the incident. I got a court order and was fined 300 mark.

A week after Victor and I got married, we came back to our flat after an early agitprop shift in front of a factory gate to find an undercover officer, whom we had often seen at our rallies, waiting for us, a search warrant in his hand.