[2][3] Lothat Mertens was born in Leverkusen in West Germany at the height of the country's remarkable postwar economic revival.
[4] A higher level doctorate from the University of Potsdam followed in 1996, received for a study of the life and works of the peace and human rights activist, Kurt Grossmann [de].
This time his dissertation was entitled "The Star of David under Hammer and Compass - The Jewish Community in the Soviet occupation zone / German Democratic Republic and their Treatment by the Party and the State 1945–1990".
Mertens was seen to endorse the view put forward by Arnulf Baring that much of East German scholarship was literally useless ("auf weite Strecken unbrauchbar").
Mario Keßler identified in his output the same absence of the necessary self-critical reflection which Mertens had found lacking in East German historical scholarship.