Bringing down the gdr was absolutely not my plan. The Wall had to go, sure. But I was no anti-communist. In the seventies, I read a lot of works by Karl Marx, Das Kapital, the early manuscripts, and I liked many of his analyses and also his hopes and visions, because they matched my Christian way of looking at life. Of course, the GDR had installed a system that didn't work, there were party idiots and blockheads at the rudder, and the whole thing had very little to do with the theory.

For me at fourteen, the so-called “youth initiation,” that wannabe rite of passage, was a radical experience. I was quite a good student, and after eighth grade I was supposed to go to the upper high school and take my final exams. Of course, submitting to this “youth initiation” was a prerequisite. My mother wanted me to take part, the teachers wanted it; everyone advised me to do it. I didn't have the strength back then to say no. I cowered, I bent over backwards, I conformed, although I knew it was wrong. It was and still is one of the biggest defeats of my life.

So when I went to the upper high school, I wanted to make up for this fiasco. In the ninth grade, I left the FDJ, as a provocation. I refused to take part in military exercises and marksmanship classes, and I finally even declared: “I will refuse to do military service.” All of which were totally unacceptable in high school at that time. The teachers and the principal were very quick to make it clear to me: “You will not take the final exams here.”

I had to leave school after tenth grade.

After that, with the help of a pastor who had quite an influence on me in this youthful phase, I went to one of the three church high schools in the GDR, where I got a good, basic humanistic education. I was there two years, took history of philosophy, Greek, and Latin, and moreover received very good training in German.