I arrived in Göttingen from Buffalo early in February 1990 and immediately the next morning proceeded to East Berlin. The atmosphere was electrifying. The walls were plastered with posters from all sorts of political groups, from the right to the ultraleft. The following day the historical association of the GDR held an emergency meeting.
Only members were admitted. Rüttler and Schleier tried unsuccessfully to obtain permission for me to attend. Horn accompanied me to the Party University, where the meeting was held, but I was not admitted until Heinrich Scheel, the president of the association, recognized me and instructed the ushers to admit me, but advised me to sit in a corner where I would not be seen. Of course, all my acquaintances recognized me.
Scheel, standing next to a statue of Lenin, opened the session by declaring that historians in the GDR had, on the whole, done respectable work during the forty years of the states existence, but that history must never again be the handmaiden of politics. One of the young researchers from the Academy of Sciences, Stefan Wolle, sprang up and said: “Mr. Scheel, you sound like a pimp who wants to organize the prostitutes from the street into an association for the preservation of morality.”
There was a tremendous outcry to eject Wolle. Scheel expressed the unrealistic hope that the GDR association be integrated into the West German association. Elections followed, with the old guard being confirmed and the reform wing unsuccessful.
Source: Wilma and Georg Iggers, Two Lives in Uncertain Times, New York: Berghahn Books, 2006, p. 215