[1] Schwanitz was born in Gera, a long established city some 75 km (40 miles) west of Dresden, and then in the heart of East Germany's southern industrial region.

He emerged from his tertiary education with degrees in Engineering Economics and in Jurisprudence, before taking a position as a research assistant in the Business Administration department at the Technology Institute at Zwickau.

[2] In October 1989 Rolf Schwanitz joined New Forum,[3] a political movement originating in Zwickau and associated with the Peaceful Revolution that soon afterwards put an end to the German Democratic Republic as a stand-alone one-party state.

[1] In 2009, following the resignation of Thomas Jurk, and until his successor Martin Dulig was elected, Schwanitz briefly served as acting regional party chairman in Saxony.

[6] The objective of such a group should be that "Religious and non-religious communities must rank equally, and enjoy the same level of respect from the state, acting on behalf of society, with no privileges allowed to one side.

[9][10] Schwanitz was very sharply critical of the public representation of the papal visit to Germany in September 2011,[11] when he was one the members of parliament who refused to attend Pope Benedict's high-profile speech to the Bundestag.

[1] The outcome of the 2002 election was close, but it enabled Gerhard Schröder to form a second coalition government with the Greens: this time Rolf Schwanitz was not a member of it.

The largest two parties both lost ground in the 2005 election, and in the end a "grand coalition" was formed between the two of them, leaving the business of opposition to the less mainstream PDS, The Greens and the FDP.