During 1975/76 he spent a year at the Karl Marx Academy, the leading political training institution in the country, operated by the Central Committee of East Germany's &lt;a href="Socialist%20Unity%20Party%20of%20Germany"&gt;ruling Socialist Unity Party ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" / SED)&lt;/a&gt;. Eisler's incumbency in command of the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards lasted for fifteen years, but he eventually retired and in 1987 Manfred Döring took over command of the regiment. He took over at a time when relations between the ruling parties in East Germany and in the Soviet Union were becoming strained in ways that many outsiders missed at the time, and there was a corresponding loss of confidence within the East German political establishment. The regiment itself had grown steadily through the 1960s and 1970s, however, and Döring was in charge of a force of more than 10,000 full-time Stasi employees with responsibilities that included security services for leading state institutions and officers and provision of body guards. He also had responsibility for the policing of demonstrations and large-scale public gatherings, whether permitted or illegal. The breach by demonstrators of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 came towards the end of a year of unprecedented civil unrest, and there was no fraternal support from Moscow for the violent state intervention that had put an end to the country's last major uprising, back in 1953. Instead November 1989 triggered a succession of events which would lead, formally in October 1990, to German reunification. Bemused by the strategic folly of Moscow's evident willingness to see an end to the political division of Europe, and in particular of Germany, in March 1990 Manfred Döring, like many of the regime's political and military leaders, was dismissed from his post.