On November 1, 1963, the Ordinary Professor for Physical Chemistry at the Humboldt University in East Berlin, Robert Havemann, included the following remarks in his lecture on conceptual thinking: “The vital source of our cultural development … is the many-sided, increasingly comprehensive information of all members of society concerning all knowledge, all problems and questions of our time. Every impediment to and limitation of information paralyzes the activity of the members of society and thereby the development of social conditions, and only puts a brake on development. At all times reactionary regimes have attempted to keep the people in ignorance. … A government can only succeed in its so very important tasks if it can rely on the active and energetic cooperation of all members of society.… Whoever is afraid of the consequences of general unlimited information and, on account of this fear, impedes it, creates thereby precisely the conditions for fateful development” (p. 52).