Alexander Amberger was born in the GDR in 1978. He is a political scientist who researches ecological utopias and the intellectual history of East Germany. His latest book, Marxist Critique and Political Utopia in the German Democratic Republic, will appear in the Historical Materialism Book Series in 2021.
Throughout the history of the German Democratic Republic, its leaders faced opposition from dissenters who believed that a socialist system needed to have democratic rights. The arguments they made — often at great personal cost — still resonate today.