As the year 1971 began, Walter Ulbricht had directed life in the German Democratic Republic, under the tutelage of his Soviet mentors in Moscow and their military might, for a quarter of a century, as head of the ruling Marxist party and for a few years also as head of state. In the middle of 1971, I attended a pastoral conference in East Berlin. The massive presence of propaganda slogans—“the head, the brain, the soul of the People is the State,” for example—and the East German pastors’ stories of governmental pressure on Christians from Kindergarteners to the elderly quickly made an impression on me. I asked one of the pastors, “Humanly speaking, how can the church survive in this situation?” Ignoring my “humanly speaking,” he replied, “Walter Ulbricht is not the Lord of the church.” Ironically, by the end of 1971, Walter Ulbricht was not even lord of the DDR. His comrades had forced him from power, replaced by a new generation.