 He emerged from his tertiary education with degrees in Engineering Economics and in Jurisprudence, before taking a position as a research assistant in the Business Administration department at the Technology Institute at Zwickau

In October 1989 Rolf Schwanitz joined New Forum, a political movement originating in Zwickau and associated with the Peaceful Revolution that soon afterwards put an end to the German Democratic Republic as a stand-alone one-party state.In November 1989, in the same month that the Berlin Wall was breached, he switched to the (in East Germany newly refounded) SDP (party).Following German reunification in August 1990 the new party quickly merged with its (till now, and since 1946, purely West German) counterpart, which made Schwanitz a member of the SPD (party).