Thomas Klein

Born in 1948, Thomas Klein studied mathematics in Berlin and worked at the Central Institute for Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR from 1973 to 1979. Because of his opposition activities and an alleged “illegal contact with the West,” he was imprisoned for political reasons in 1979–80 and was banned from professional and academic publishing until 1989. In 1990, he was a member of the GDR People’s Chamber for the United Left and subsequently served briefly in the German Bundestag. He later worked as a contemporary historian at the Centre for Contemporary History Research in Potsdam. His publications include Für die Einheit und Reinheit der Partei and studies on the SED, Stalinism, and opposition in the GDR.