Vom Versagen des real existierenden Sozialismus")[3] had appeared in April 1989 and was a powerful stimulus along the route to the Citizens' Movement that within a couple of years had led to the end of the German Democratic Republic as a standalone state.
[2] Twenty years later he would describe himself at age 20 as having joined the SED "out of conviction": "Back then", he later recalled, he was "even a bit fanatical"[5][6] A powerful adumbration of future disenchantment with the East German regime nevertheless came in 1968, in the context of student discussions of the Prague Spring[7] when he was officially reprimanded for "revisionism" and "psychologizing the law",[2] and suffered the withdrawal of a previously agreed research scholarship.
[5] After receiving his law degree Henrich went on to perform his Military service in the National People's Army before taking a post as a research assistant at the prestigious "Walter Ulbricht" German Legal Academy (as it was known at the time) in the Babelsberg quarter of Potsdam.
[2] The arrest of Rudolf Bahro in 1977 affected Henrich deeply[10] and he slowly became increasingly disillusioned with the East German regime and its Soviet-style Socialism,[8] composing several highly critical essays (which remained unpublished).
[5] For approximately two years, starting in 1987, the camera installed to monitor people entering and leaving the Ministry was positioned so that it could periodically swing round and point directly at Henrich's desk, through his office window across the road.
[4] It presented a devastating and detailed criticism of a state where socialism had not progressed beyond the "larval stage" ("Sozialismus im Larvenstadium") and the security services felt free to operate outside the law.
[5] In East Germany Henrich was expelled from the ruling SED (party) and excluded from the "Collective of Lawyers" ("Kollegium der Rechtsanwälte")[7] which effectively terminated, for the time being, his legal career in Eisenhüttenstadt.
[5] That did not happen this time, however, possibly because behind the scenes the East Germany leadership hardliners were themselves struggling with a loss of self-confidence resulting from the political loosening now under way in the Soviet Union itself.
By this time, in any event, the Berlin wall had been breached by demonstrators on the eastern side early in November 1989, and when it became clear that the fraternal Soviet troops had no instructions to prevent people from crossing it, the gate was seen to have been left open for a reunification process that now appeared unstoppable.
[7] There had also been a project involving the Gruner + Jahr publishing conglomerate to set up a pan-regional daily newspaper called "Die Ostdeutsche", based on the model of the highly successful Süddeutsche Zeitung.