[3] In 1966 her brother, at the time barely seventeen years old, was accused of "slandering the state" and sentenced to a four-year jail term, following which she resolved to emigrate.

[3] In 1968 she passed her school final exams ("Abitur") which under other circumstances would have opened the way to a university-level education, at the same time, due to the subjects studied, earning a diploma in mechanical draftsmanship.

[3] Next she received a contract at the Neue Bühne (theatre) in Senftenberg, a small town in the flat countryside north of Dresden, where she worked as an actress.

Accordingly, at this time most of Klier's theatrical productions in East Germany were met with official suspicion or open criticism from the many channels employed by the party.

She was, necessarily, a member of the official "East German Theatrical Union" ("Theaterverband der DDR"), but found herself prevented from accepting invitations to work in theatres abroad – for instance in Hungary, the Netherlands and West Germany.

Despite, or possibly because of this accolade, she left the theatre that year, and in 1985, after resigning her party membership in April, she was served with a ban on further professional work.

In order to provide a factual basis for the social critique incorporated in and promoted by her artistic work, in 1983 Freya Klier began to make systematic enquiries of women with children about their home lives.

She had herself been a single mother since the birth of Nadja, her daughter, in 1973: she knew from personal experience that there was a stark contrast between official propaganda and the actual condition of women in society.

[3][6] Krawczyk had by this time become something of an iconic figure, especially for younger East German fans: later in 1985 he and Klier were both served with what amounted to a nationwide ban on professional work (Berufsverbot), which was linked with exclusion from the national "Theatrical Union" ("Theaterverband").

The authorities, with a characteristic absence of subtlety, sought to destroy Krawczyk's fan base, describing him as a "national enemy" ("Staatsfeind") and even as the "new Wolf Biermann".

At the same time she found that the limits of the state's ideological power to influence had been reached, and that most young people of the 80s generation – if only inwardly – resisted the party's preposterous claims for the society over which it presided.

[3][7] While Klier and Krawczyk were still in East Germany she communicated the results of her researches in Samizdat publications, and incorporated them into presentations critical of the social system that she continued to give in churches or private homes.

[3][7] In October 1986 Klier was a co-founder of the "Solidarity Church", an opposition group that sought to create a network across the country that took a critical position in respect of the one- party dictatorship, and she became a member of its co-ordination committee.

Copies of this letter were widely distributed through the usual informal channels across East Germany and it was also published in the West German media.

At the same time Klier and Krawczyk agreed together to take part in the annual mass parade held each year in January to honour Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, two pioneers of German Communism who had been assassinated during months of revolution that followed the First World War.

However, at the last minute they learned that other dissident demonstrators had planned to use the event to highlight government refusal to permit them to emigrate to the west, an issue that had never gone away.

It was anticipated that western television teams would attempt to report the demonstration, and in order to avoid the risk of "mixed messaging" Klier and Krawczyk decided to leave their own alternative banners at home.

[3] Some dissidents nevertheless did participate in the demonstration, and despite the best endeavours of Ministry for State Security officials, several "unauthorized" banners appears on international television reports.

Leading opposition figures targeted now included Regina and Wolfgang Templin, Werner Fischer, Bärbel Bohley, Ralf Hirsch and Freya Klier herself.

East German media launched a reinvigorated defamation campaign against those detained, but in West Germany and from opposition groups in other Soviet sponsored states in central Europe there came various declarations of support and solidarity.

Shortly afterwards the lawyer assigned to Freya Klier, Wolfgang Schnur, greatly surprised her when he went public with vehement criticism of his client.

[15] The government felt more insecure than many western commentators assumed at the time, faced with a growing surge of street protests at home and growing uncertainty over whether, in the era of Glasnost, the authorities could still rely on fraternal military support from the Soviet Union of the kind employed the last time total breakdown had threatened, back in 1953 (or more recently, in Czechoslovakia, in 1968).

On arriving in the west Klier's first public action was arrange for her lawyer to read a sixteen line prepared statement to the television cameras stressing that she and Krawcyk had not left their country voluntarily, and were keen to return home as soon as possible.

[3] A few days later Klier and Krawczyk gave an interview to Der Spiegel setting out their situation and some of the background to it more fully, and describing the treatment to which they had been subjected following their arrest.

In the dissident congregations and meetings in East Germany there is reason to believe that the events that followed the 17 January 1988 demonstration, and the publicity they attracted, served only to increase pressure on the state authorities[15] and to hasten the regime's demise and thereby the return of democracy after not quite 58 years of one-party dictatorship.

[8] In 1996 she was a founding instigator of the Bürgerbüro initiative in Berlin which provides advice and support for surviving victims of East German's one-party dictatorship.