Born in 1920 into a communist family in Berlin, Helmuth Stoecker was forced to emigrate to Britain in 1933 after the arrest of his father by the Nazis. In 1947 he returned to what was now East Germany, and began an academic career as an historian at the Humboldt-University in East Berlin. Later he became one of the German Democratic Republic's foremost specialists in German colonial history and the history of Africa. After the collapse of the GDR, shortly before he died in 1994, Helmuth Stoecker wrote down these reflections on his life as an academic. He intended this book to explain, from his point of view, the rise and fall of the socialism in the GDR. to non-academic English-speaking readers. It contains some details of particular interest to those who are interested in scientific life in the GDR, as well as some personal reflections on the daily life conditions there.

An examination of the roots of the reunification of Germany, arguing that Erich Honecker's rigid communist regime was undermined by the conflict between Moscow and East Berlin. In the end, Gorbachev's objective - a radical renewal of socialism - turned out to be unattainable.