Saling passed his "Abitur" (school leaving exam) in or before 1943, which in normal times would have opened the way to university admission, but the times were far from normal. Between 1943 and 1945 he was conscripted for military service. In 1945 he enrolled as a medical student at the University of Jena, which after 1945 found itself administered as part of the Soviet occupation zone (relaunched in October 1949 as the Soviet sponsored &lt;a href="German%20Democratic%20Republic"&gt;German Democratic Republic / East Germany)&lt;/a&gt;. Between 1945 and 1952 he studied at Jena and at Berlin.