As a result of an antisemitic campaign orchestrated by the communist authorities and the participation of the Polish army in the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Rolke decided to emigrate. “I could not stand this atmosphere” – he said in an interview in 2008. “This was no longer a country one could live in” – he added (Purzyńska Małgorzata 2008). However, he did not get a passport, as he had been blacklisted due to his contacts with foreigners and a recording of a private conversation made by the SB (Security Service), where he was critical of the authorities. In 1970, he left for an art scholarship in the German Federal Republic and did not return. For 10 years, he lived in Hamburg and married a German woman. As a freelancer, he worked for leading press titles in Western Europe, i.a. Die Zeit, Stern, Der Spiegel, Deutsche Allgemeine Sonntagsblatt, as well as with Art – a prestigious Hamburg-based art magazine (with which he occasionally collaborates to this day). During that time, he created series of photoreports – about the Fischmarkt market in Hamburg, as well as about a commune and addiction therapy centre founded near Hamburg ran by a countercultural organization of former drug addicts.