 Soon after the war, which ended in May 1945, Pehnert joined the Free German Youth (""Freie Deutsche Jugend"" / FDJ), which within the Soviet occupation zone was being built up as the youth wing of the zone's newly emerged ruling Socialist Unity Party (""Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands"" / SED).In October 1949 the Soviet occupation zone was relaunched as the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), a separated Soviet sponsored German state with political and socio-economic structures modeled on those of the Soviet Union itself.In 1950 he undertook a "young journalists' course", and between 1950 and 1954 he contributed as a journalist to "Junge Welt", at that time the official daily newspaper of the FDJ.