The most impressive pictures of the erosions and eruptions in the Eastern Bloc were published by stern, and they often came from Harald Schmitt. Hardly any photo reporter in the 1980s was as close to events: whether at the great stagings of power or the small moments of resistance. In Schmitt’s photographs of people under socialism and of the hot spots of upheaval, the vibrating of the time is captured. The photographs were taken mainly in the GDR, and also in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and China. Peter Sandmeyer’s accompanying texts open up historical contexts and tell many stories behind the pictures.