[3][4] Neubert was born into the family of a Protestant minister in 1940 in Herschdorf, a hillside village near Erfurt in central southern Germany.
[1] In 1984 he became community sociology secretary in the Theology Studies department with the Berlin-based East German League of Evangelical Churches.
Neubert also produced a number of quasi-political sociological and theological studies: some of his work appeared in West Germany under the pseudonym "Christian Joachim".
[2] That same year, at the age of 46, he received his doctorate from the Free University of Berlin for a dissertation on the history of political opposition in the German Democratic Republic from 1949 to 1989.
[2] Together with the agency's commissioner of the time, Joachim Gauck, Neubert compiled the German contribution to the German-language version of The Black Book of Communism, writing the chapter entitled "Politische Verbrechen in der DDR" ("Political Crimes in East Germany").
In 1998 he was co-opted as a board member of the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship (Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur).
[2] By this time he had already become, in 1996, a founding member of the Bürgerbüro (Verein) Bürgerbüro - Verein zur Aufarbeitung von Folgeschäden der SED-Diktatur, a Berlin-based organisation established to provide practical and psychological advice and support for victims of East Germany's Socialist Unity Party version of socialism,[13] subsequently becoming the organisation's president on the death of Bärbel Bohley.