[2] Bahmann was born in Plauen, an industrial town in the south-west of Saxony that had boomed in the nineteenth century.
The decline of the German textiles sector after the First World War created particular economic and social hardship in the town during the 1920s, however.
Rudolf Bahmann attended school locally and then undertook an apprenticeship in agriculture on his parents' 13 hectare (32 acre) farm.
Also in 1945, he was a founder member of the Anti-Fascist Youth group in Gera, a short distance to the north of Plauen.
[1] Between 1960 and 1963 Bahmann studied at the Karl Marx Party Academy in Berlin, emerging with a degree in Social Sciences.