Matthias Buchholz has a doctorate in record-keeping. Since 2000, he has been the manager of the Department for Archives, Libraries and Documentation within the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship. There, he is responsible for several collections pertaining to cultural opposition in the GDR. When the regime collapsed in 1989, he was still attending high school. The lack of freedom of speech and an education that favored doublespeak was deeply troubling to him.