56 Facts About Rudolf Bahro

Rudolf Bahro was a dissident from East Germany who, since his death, has been recognised as a philosopher, political figure and author.

Until 1945, the family lived in Lower Silesia: first in the spa town of Bad Flinsberg and then in neighboring Gerlachsheim, where Rudolf Bahro attended the village school.

Towards the end of World War II Max Rudolf Bahro was drafted into the Volkssturm, and, after his capture, detained as a Polish prisoner.

From 1950 to 1954, Rudolf Bahro attended high school in Furstenberg.

Since it was assumed that all high-school students would join the Free German Youth, Rudolf Bahro reluctantly joined in 1950.

Rudolf Bahro was regarded as intelligent, and graduated from high school with honors.

Rudolf Bahro attended Humboldt University in Berlin from 1954 to 1959 and studied philosophy.

Until 1956, Rudolf Bahro was an admirer of Lenin and Stalin; Khrushchev's leaked "secret speech" in February 1956 changed his views.

Rudolf Bahro edited a local newspaper, Die Linie and encouraged the area's farmers to join the LPG agricultural cooperative.

In 1959 Rudolf Bahro married Gundula Lambke, a Russian language teacher.

In 1960 Rudolf Bahro was appointed to the party leadership of the University of Greifswald, where he founded the Unsere Universitat newspaper and served as editor-in-chief.

From 1967 to 1977 Rudolf Bahro worked for a number of companies in the rubber and plastics industry as an organization development specialist.

Rudolf Bahro expressed this view in a December 1967 letter to the Chairman of the State Council, Walter Ulbricht, proposing a transfer of workplace responsibility to the workers with grassroots democracy.

Rudolf Bahro decided not to make the break publicly, to protect his book project.

In 1972 Rudolf Bahro began part-time work on his dissertation on development conditions of high-school and technical-college groups in the VEBs.

However, in 1974 Gundula informed state security about the secret book project and handed over a copy of the manuscript; after that, Rudolf Bahro was under surveillance.

In 1975 Rudolf Bahro submitted his dissertation at the Technical University Leuna-Merseburg, which was evaluated favorably by three reviewers.

Later in West Germany, Rudolf Bahro said that the theoretical bases for The Alternative were Karl August Wittfogel's 1957 Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power and earlier Marxist works.

Rudolf Bahro was unable to cite Wittfogel because of the latter's anticommunism.

Rudolf Bahro concludes that in the Soviet Union not the theoretically expected socialism but a form of proto-socialism had emerged.

The next day, Rudolf Bahro was arrested and taken to the Berlin-Hohenschonhausen prison.

About half of the copies of The Alternative which Rudolf Bahro had posted shortly before his arrest in the GDR were intercepted by the authorities.

On 30 June 1978, Rudolf Bahro was convicted in camera of treason and betraying state secrets, and sentenced to eight years' imprisonment.

The Committee for the Release of Rudolf Bahro organized an international conference, held 16 to 19 November 1978 in West Berlin and attended by over 2,000 participants.

Rudolf Bahro was awarded the Carl von Ossietzky Medal by the International League for Human Rights and made a member of the Swedish and Danish chapters of PEN International.

On 11 October 1979, the 30th anniversary of the founding of the GDR, Rudolf Bahro was granted amnesty.

In West Germany Rudolf Bahro soon joined the nascent Green party, making a commitment to unite socialist and values-based coservatism currents in the new party since compromise was a necessity.

Rudolf Bahro interpreted this as a lack of introspection and transcendence, rejecting the traditionally materialistic outlook of socialism.

At the beginning of 1980, Rudolf Bahro studied with Oskar Negt at the Leibniz University Hannover.

Rudolf Bahro's thesis appeared as a book, A Plea for Creative Initiative.

In 1982, Rudolf Bahro adopted a more radical position due to the contemporary economic crisis.

Rudolf Bahro advocated a restructuring of society in economic, environmental and social-policy terms, which should be linked to a broad retreat from the world market and a move away from capitalist industry.

Rudolf Bahro became involved in the peace movement, advocating a nuclear-free Europe.

Rudolf Bahro's Dare Commune was an alternative community during the early days of the Greens.

Rudolf Bahro believed that the transformation of society must begin on a small scale, requiring a change in the people themselves and a rediscovery of spirituality.

Rudolf Bahro was influenced by the Congregation of the Benedictines and the mystical experience of God.

In 1981 Rudolf Bahro visited the North Korea, where he was received as a guest of the state.

Rudolf Bahro saw this as his most important trip, to a state he admired with a system "to satisfy all the basic requirements of security".

Rudolf Bahro strongly favored the latter option, and believed in renewal rather than reform.

Rudolf Bahro called for the conquest of the right-left divide; to escape its minority position, the Greens should "penetrate the territory of the Bavarian CSU".

Rudolf Bahro called for long-term goals, the elimination of short-term tactics and government decentralization.

Rudolf Bahro advocated an "invisible church", which would provide the necessary spiritual dimension.

In 1986, Rudolf Bahro held "learning workshops" at his home in Worms, which featured discussion of his ideas and meditation.

Rudolf Bahro met Beatrice Ingermann, who had been conducting a similar project since 1983 that was a community in the Eifel.

Rudolf Bahro joined her group; they married in 1988, and had a daughter.

Rudolf Bahro wanted to work to ensure that the regime could keep its autonomy and maintain what he thought was its greatest political achievement: the primacy of politics over economics.

On 16 December 1989, Rudolf Bahro had the opportunity of speaking to the assembled delegates of the extraordinary party conference of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, whose chairman had, a week ago, been his former legal counsel, Gysi.

Rudolf Bahro went on to present his vision of a "socio-ecological" restructuring of the GDR.

Rudolf Bahro concluded that he no longer had anything in common with this party.

Rudolf Bahro thus set up his own school of social science that is not to be confused with others that go by the name of social ecology.

On 16 June 1990, again represented by Gysi, Rudolf Bahro was rehabilitated by the Supreme Court of the GDR.

In 1990, there were accusations that Rudolf Bahro was striving for "eco-dictatorship".

Rudolf Bahro indignantly denied this but soon found himself confronted with more accusations of this nature.

Rudolf Bahro was so devastated that he had to cancel a semester of lectures.

Rudolf Bahro was convinced that his illness was the consequence of traumatic experiences such as the suicide of his wife and resisted conventional therapy, instead trying various alternative methods of diagnosis and therapy and temporarily moving into a monastery.

Rudolf Bahro died in Berlin on 5 December 1997 and was buried at the Dorotheenstadt cemetery in Berlin.