The erection of the Berlin Wall forced him to drop out of the school he had attended in West Berlin in 1961 and he was forbidden from taking his Abitur exams in the East for refusing to join the Free German Youth movement.

[1] In 1966, for refusing both regular service and Bausoldat (construction soldier in the National People's Army), he was brutally beaten and arrested by the Stasi, and put into prison for eight months where he was starved, tortured, abused and interrogated.

He then worked as a Lutheran pastor in at Samariterkirche in Berlin-Friedrichshain and took part in the opposition,[2] such as being the editor of samizdat publications with Thomas Welz.

He was Minister for Disarmament and Defence of East Germany in the cabinet of Hans Modrow and later in the one of Lothar de Maizière.

In April 2023, he was one of the 22 guests at the ceremony in which former Chancellor Angela Merkel was decorated with the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit for special achievement by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at Schloss Bellevue in Berlin.