In December 1962 Hermlin joined the initiators of a group dedicated to the reading of young poets at the East German Akademie der Künste (English: Academy of Arts). Some of the poets featured by this group included Wolf Biermann, Volker Braun, Bernd Jentzsch, Sarah Kirsch, and Karl Mickel. This group, and the Akademie der Künste as a whole, was at the forefront of a spike in the popularity of lyric poetry in 1960s East Germany. Thereupon, he was relieved of his position of Secretary of Poetry at the Akademie, although he remained a member. He was a critic of the Soviet crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968, although he did not make these criticisms very open. He was much more open in his criticism of the East German government's 1976 expulsion of a contemporary poet, Wolf Biermann, whose poetry Hermlin exhibited some years previously. Going against the official politics of the day, he, in conjunction with Erich Honecker, organized a conference of writers dedicated to the furthering of peace and reconciliation, the Berliner Begegnung. He was also a member of the Schriftstellerverband der DDR and the Akademie der Künste West Berlin (English: East German Writer's Association and West Berlin Academy of the Arts, respectively).