When he was 4 war ended, in May 1945, and frontier changes mandated by the victorious powers involved the transfer of Silesia from Germany to Poland.

Implementation of the changes was accompanied by a major programme of ethnic cleansing: Fikentscher's family was relocated to Zwickau where he grew up.

[3] He passed his School Finals exam (Abitur) in 1959 and then transferred to the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg where he studied between 1961 and 1967, the year in which he qualified as a medical doctor.

[1][5] While the country's leaders, no longer able to rely on Soviet support for a repeat of the violent but effective repression of the 1953 uprising, hesitated over how to deal with New Forum, November 1989 saw a re-emergence in East Germany of the Social Democratic Party, some forty years after it had been controversially merged out of (independent) existence.

For the 1990 General Election a new system was adopted, apparently inspired by the West German approach, whereby voters could choose between a number of different party lists.

Although this was regarded as a disappointing result for the party, the name at the top of the list from the Halle district was that of Rüdiger Fikentscher, who was duly elected and took his seat.

[3] Rüdiger Fikentscher sat as a member of the Saxony-Anhalt Landtag (legislative assembly) between 1990 and 2011, representing the Halle 3 electoral district.