Five decades ago, Stephen Wechsler ’49, an American soldier stationed in West Germany, jumped into the Danube River to begin a new life on its opposite bank—communist East Germany.

Wechsler records this experience and four subsequent decades of life as an American expatriate in East Germany in his new book, Crossing the River: A Memoir of the American Left, the Cold War, and Life in East Germany, due for publication in the fall.

The book describes a life filled with adventure and decisions that seem simultaneously shocking and perfectly rational, given the writer’s somewhat rebellious personality.

Wechsler grew up in a liberal Jewish family in New York in the 1930’s, his father an art dealer and his mother an Estonian immigrant. Despite financial troubles, his parents provided him with an elite education that culminated at Harvard, where he majored in economics, focusing on workers’ unions.

Crossing the River is divided into two sections. The first is a chronological sketch of Wechsler’s youth and time at Harvard; the second, his years in East Germany.

Wechsler recalls those Harvard years as vibrant but somewhat unfocused.

“At Harvard…there was really little specialization. I was unprepared for the world,” Wechsler recalled in an interview.

Outside of classes, Wechsler found his niche among “the radical left-wing bunch.” He threw himself into the Harvard Liberal Union and the campus branch of the communist party, serving for a while as campus chair of the American Youth for Democracy. Wechsler also sang with the Glee Club and attended performances by the drama club.

Harvard was still an all-male school in the ’40s. In Wechsler’s Dunster House, male residents were allowed to entertain female guests only between 1 and 7 p.m. on normal days—with an hour extension over the weekend if there was a dance.

But despite the strict atmosphere, Wechsler’s undergraduate life was filled with adventure. He traveled to Washington for peace protests and hitchhiked across the country and to Canada over holidays and weekends.

Tuition was $200 per semester when Wechsler attended. He says he paid for his first three terms with a $1000 prize that he had won in a New York-area radio contest for high school seniors.

Looking for a more “proletarian” lifestyle after graduating from Harvard, Wechsler entered the workforce at a factory in Buffalo, N.Y. However, he soon grew disillusioned by the material concerns of his fellow workers.

Directionless but patriotic, Wechsler joined the U.S. Army, serving in Bavaria, Germany. At the same time, Wechsler kept quiet about his radical political views, which led him so far as to take part in communist May Day parade while on a break in Spain. But with McCarthyism raging at home, Wechsler’s political activities would soon become a problem.

One sunny afternoon in 1952, Wechsler received a package from the Judge Advocate General ordering him to present himself to the U.S. military court in Nuremberg.

Wechsler’s knee-jerk reaction was panic—he had lied about his past participation in “subversive organizations” when joining the army and was now threatened with a $10,000 fine and/or a five-year prison sentence.