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This text places Marxist groups and thinkers or, more broadly, reformist socialists in the context of all the currents of opposition in the GDR between 1945 and 1990 and seeks to measure their impact. Working chronologically, he discusses the essentially anti-Marxist resistance of the 1940s and 1950s, as well as the conflicts within the SED during the uprising of 17 June 1953, followed by the emergence of a reformist current from 1956 onwards, which evolved into dissidence for some (W. Harich, R. Havemann, W. Biermann, R. Bahro). After the Prague Spring in 1968 and the Biermann affair in 1976, Marxist-Leninist texts were turned against the SED. The citizens’ movement that emerged from 1976 onwards included a number of Marxist-inspired groups which, at the time of the 1989 revolution, came together under the banner of the United Left (Vereinigte Linke).