As a close friend of Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker, Hermlin soon found himself at the forefront of East German culture and politics, and split his time between them.

In December 1962 Hermlin joined the initiators of a group dedicated to the reading of young poets at the East German Akademie der Künste (English: Academy of Arts).

Some of the poets featured by this group included Wolf Biermann, Volker Braun, Bernd Jentzsch, Sarah Kirsch, and Karl Mickel.

He was much more open in his criticism of the East German government's 1976 expulsion of a contemporary poet, Wolf Biermann, whose poetry Hermlin exhibited some years previously.

Going against the official politics of the day, he, in conjunction with Erich Honecker, organized a conference of writers dedicated to the furthering of peace and reconciliation, the Berliner Begegnung.