ONE DAY, IN THE SPRING OF 1968, Günter told me to meet him outside the lab for a cigarette break. After offering me a cigarette from a pack of filterless Karos, by far the most noxious cigarettes on the market in East Germany, he got straight to the point.
“Albrecht, you need to join the Party.”
His directness surprised me. This was the second time since high school that someone had attempted to recruit me into the elite organization that essentially ruled the entire country. By instinct, I was not much of a joiner, but my father’s example had shown me that Party membership was a great career booster.
“Why?” I asked Günter.
“Because you’re the smartest guy in our group and we need people like you in the Party. We will be the leaders of the future,” he said, appealing to both my logical mind and my ego. “So what do you say?”
“I’ll think about it. But don’t push me.”
“Fair enough.”
Unbeknownst to me, Günter had engaged an ally in the recruitment process, our professor of Marxist philosophy, Siegmund Borek. Professor Borek was a firm believer in the Communist cause—so much so that he had chosen to teach Marxism rather than chemistry, the subject he had majored in.
One day, he pulled me aside after class.
“You really ought to think about joining the Party, Albrecht. You have great potential. How would you like to work closely with your friends Günter and Matthias?”
“You aren’t the first one to bring this up,” I said, “but tell me what will be expected of me and how Party membership would benefit me personally.”
“It’s very simple,” Professor Borek said. “You will participate in leading the affairs at the university. You will be privy to information before it is shared with the general public—if it is shared at all. And you will be prepared to become one of the leaders of your generation. Does this not sound good?”
Before I could reply, he took his recruiting efforts to another level by inviting me to his apartment.
“Tell you what,” he said, “come for dinner one night and we’ll talk things through and answer all your questions.”
An invitation to dinner with a professor—now that was something! And though the apartment turned out to be a typical dimly lit, one-room, third floor walk-up, and the lukewarm mutton the professor’s wife served for dinner left something to be desired, the fact that I, a mere freshman at the university, was able to spend time with a professor in his private home was far more significant. Our conversation centered on the future of the world. As a philosopher, Professor Borek had the big picture in mind.
“Think about it, Albrecht. We’re going to put Marx’s theory into practice, and we will finish what Lenin started. We will build a just world that is free of any kind of oppression, and we are inviting you to participate in this great endeavor.”
His enthusiasm was contagious, and soon after that evening at his home I applied for Party membership, sponsored by the professor and Günter. After an interview with the leadership of the Party organization within the chemistry section, I was voted in as a candidate of the Party for the standard one-year probationary period.
Once I began to understand what I had joined, I was delighted to be part of a group of intelligent people who believed in the same ideals I did and who were in a position to put those beliefs into practice. Party members believed in the cause, and we all understood that bumps in the road were only minor obstacles to building a fully functional Communist state. The sincere efforts at intellectual honesty along with the openness of this group were the final blocks in my ideological foundation. I believed wholeheartedly in the Party’s objectives, and I never would have expected that, in the decades to come, I would come to see the world completely differently. At the time, it was all very clear to me:
- Marxism-Leninism is a science with a sound economic and philosophical foundation. Mankind moved from slavery to feudalism to capitalism. The logical next and final step is communism.
- Capitalism is based on the exploitation of workers by the rich owners of the means of production. The Marxist maxim, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” would guarantee happiness for all human beings regardless of their innate capabilities.
- The Soviet Union and its allies would succeed in freeing the world from the scourge of capitalism. Signs of progress were already visible all over the world as newly freed Third World colonies often wound up with socialist-leaning governments.
- The working class would take the leading role in overthrowing capitalism, and the working class had taken its rightful leadership role in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries. The Communist Party was the key instrument of the working class to fulfill its destiny.
- West Germany was the successor state to Hitler’s Germany. It was fully supported by the ultimate enemy of all mankind, the United States.
Certainly, there were some questions that contained seeds of doubt: How could the working class be in a leadership role when most of the workers I knew were not very bright? Why did our leaders, Walter Ulbricht and, later, Erich Honecker, sound so unintelligent and boring? Why did our teachers have no convincing answers to the question of the meaning of life?
But as a newly minted member of the elite, with a vested interest in the success of the established order, and because my fundamental beliefs were rock solid, I easily swept those questions and doubts under the carpet.
After attending my first Party meeting, I joined Günter, who was already a full member, for a cigarette in front of the building.
“Hey, this was great,” I said. “Thanks for inviting me in. This is a very good place for me.”
Günter smiled proudly. “Yes, my friend, this is a very good time to join the Party. All of the hard work has already been done by the older generation, and it will soon be up to us to finish the job. Look how far we’ve come since the war. We have better consumer goods now, my parents just bought a color TV set, our athletes are among the best in the world, and the GDR is getting respect from everywhere.”
Soon I was recruited to take a prominent role in the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ), the Communist youth movement. Prior to college, I had stayed under the radar by volunteering for the modest role of treasurer, but this was the big leagues now. I could not, and would not, evade the call to duty any longer.
At the beginning of our sophomore year, I was elected secretary of our twelve-student youth group. The following year, I became first secretary of the entire class of approximately sixty-five students, and by my senior year, I had been elevated to first secretary of the Communist youth organization of the entire chemistry section, comprising nearly four hundred students.
In May 1970, because of my volunteer work and my outstanding grades, I was nominated for and received the Karl Marx Scholarship, a prestigious grant that was awarded once a year to approximately seventy students nationwide. The award included a stipend of 450 marks per month, which was a fortune to me.
Through my first three years at the university, I essentially aced the entire program, and I was a well-respected student leader in the chemistry section. As such, several enticing career options quickly presented themselves to me. Though I still held to my dream of becoming a tenured professor in chemistry, a goal that now seemed well within reach, there were competing interests pointing me in the direction of a career within the Party or with the government. I had been approached by university Party officials about possibly taking over leadership of the Party group in the chemistry section. It was highly unusual to offer such an important position to a man of my limited years. At the same time, I was recruited to become the deputy youth leader for the entire university. The typical succession pattern would have led to my becoming the leader of approximately ten thousand students within two years.
But there was another unexpected option that would soon appear on the scene, an opportunity that began with a simple knock on my dorm room door.