Rudolf Bahro - The Party Workers

The Party Workers

After his state examination, the party sent Bahro to Sachsendorf (as of June 2012 a part of Lindendorf) on the river Oder, where he edited the local newspaper called Die Linie (The line), and encouraged the area's farmers to join the cooperative (LPG). In 1959, Bahro married a Russian teacher, Gundula Lembke, and the couple had two girls (one of whom died on the day of birth) and a boy, in addition to a pre-marriage daughter. In 1960, Bahro was appointed to the University of Party Leadership in Greifswald, where he founded the newspaper Our University, of which he was executive editor. In this year his first book appeared, a collection of poems entitled In dieser Richtung ("In this direction"). From 1962 onward, he worked as a consultant for the Corporate Executive Committee of the Union of Science in Berlin, and, in 1965,was appointed deputy chief of the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ) youth and student magazine, Forum. During Bahro's work with the FDJ, he was hampered by a persistent conflict connected with the increasingly restrictive policies of the SED, a transformation which Bahro criticized. Due to the unauthorized publication of Paul Volker Braun's piece, "Belly Dumper", Bahro was dismissed as deputy chief in 1967.