With the question of where to build his future still unresolved, Markov considered moving back to Slovenia – by now part of Yugoslavia – or Graz (still in Austria) in order to be near his parents and wider family. He rejected the idea partly because he believed his family had been insufficiently resolute in opposing the National Socialists during the German occupation. He did, during 1946, make several trips to Berlin. During one of these, he attended an historians' conference at the Hotel Adlon in the eastern half of the city (and therefore in the Soviet zone). At the conference he was able to make himself noticed by giving a reply to the speech of welcome given by Anton Ackermann, a leading member of the team engaged since 1945 in implementing a well planned nation-building exercise under the supervision of the military administration and the leadership of Walter Ulbricht. Shortly after the conference Markov received two job offers: one came from the University of Greifswald in the extreme northeast of the Soviet zone and the other came from the University of Leipzig in Saxony. He chose Leipzig, he later explained, because the university rector that year was the distinguished philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer. It was still 1946 when he relocated from the Rhineland to Leipzig on the banks of the Pleiße. As a Marxist historian he had seen no future for himself in the western part of Germany. There are also indications that he was troubled by political developments in the western zones. Many years later he said that his decision might have been different if he had been able to foresee, in 1946, the 1968 developments in the West German universities.