When released a month later after international protest, Rathenow continued to write satires, sketches and poems, refusing to emigrate.
Despite close surveillance by the notorious Secret Police (Staatssicherheit or Stasi), Rathenow and his friends managed to smuggle manuscripts out to the West to be published there.
As a cultural figure, Rathenow fills in the function of arts editor for the quarterly magazine, "Liberal" (sponsored by Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung at Berlin), in an honorary capacity.
Bernd Kaufmann; Wallstein, Göttingen, 2002); or his notes as a victim of the East German secret police ("Stasi") after having read his file (as published in: Stasi-Akten zwischen Politik und Zeitgeschichte.
[2] Moreover, there is a bulk of texts, e.g. political comments and other short pieces, within the World Wide Web: * Meine Stasiaufarbeitung (Juli 1977: Wiener Journal); Finally, a German scholar, Dr. Udo Scheer, published a study on the political and cultural opponents in Jena – including Rathenow as a student – since the middle of the 1970s: Vision und Wirklichkeit.