[3] As the war drew to a close, formally ending in May 1945, Paris was rescued by advancing American troops from a fire in the cellar of the school in Sondershausen.

In 2004, in commemoration of this event, which involved the rescuing of many families, he produced an altar triptych for the Trinitatis Church in Sondershausen where, many years before, he had been baptized.

[5] By this time his urge to become a painter had become firmly rooted: between 1950 and 1952 he undertook appropriate studies, starting with evening classes at the Visual Arts Academy in Weimar and moving on, in 1951, to the Workers' and Peasants' faculty at Jena where he qualified for an entitlement to attend a university.

[5] Here his teachers included Kurt Robbel [de], Arno Mohr, Bert Heller, Gabriele Mucchi and Toni Mau.

It was in this capacity that in 1989 he was a co-signatory of a declaration calling for the party to avoid violence during the succession of events that led, in October 1990, to German reunification.

The circumstances proved controversial because the "portrait" by Paris showed not Busch in a characteristically heroic pose, but as a tired old man.