Lotte Ulbricht

Charlotte Kühn, party activist: born Berlin 19 April 1903; married first Erich Wendt (marriage dissolved 1936), second 1953 Walter Ulbricht (died 1973; one adopted daughter deceased); died Berlin 27 March 2002.

It was in the 1960s that Lotte Ulbricht emerged from the shadows and was often seen in public with her husband, Walter Ulbricht, the East German leader. After building the Berlin Wall in 1961, the East German Communists were paying greater attention to public relations and attempting to humanise a rather dull couple. Lotte was pictured being rowed by Walter on the river Spree, attending the opera or going to vote. However, she was not merely a politician's wife; she had come to politics independently of her husband.

Born Charlotte Kühn, in Rixdorf, west Berlin, in 1903, she left school to take up office work in 1919. This upward mobility did not lead her to forget her working-class roots and, from the age of 16, she was active in the Communist Party (KPD) youth movement. From 1921 onwards, she employed her secretarial skills in the KPD interest, first in its headquarters in Berlin, and then in Essen. From 1922 to 1923, she worked for the Communist Youth International (KJI) in Moscow. From there she returned to Berlin to work for the KPD group in the German parliament, going on to take employment from 1927 to 1931, at the Soviet trade delegation in the German capital.

At the start of Hitler's Third Reich, in 1933, she was on the staff of the Communist International in Moscow. There it was as dangerous as in Berlin. Her first husband, Erich Wendt, was arrested by the Soviet secret police and she too was investigated. By that time, 1936, she was the partner of Walter Ulbricht, a member of the KPD's leading body, the Politburo. After the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, in 1941, life eased for the couple and both played active roles among the German émigré community in Moscow.

In 1945 Lotte and Walter followed the Red Army back to Berlin, where she became a departmental head in the refounded KPD. From 1947 she served as Walter's personal assistant. In 1953 she gave up this role. This coincided with her marriage to him, but it was more because of the criticism of the "cult of personality" following Stalin's death in March that year. Having served Stalin well, Walter Ulbricht was by then virtual dictator of the German Democratic Republic (DDR) but his position appeared precarious; he had just faced a workers' revolt. She also relinquished her positions in the Women's Commission of the Politburo and on the board of the party's theoretical organ, Einheit. From then until her husband's forced resignation in 1971, she played the loyal wife in public, working behind the scenes to help secure Walter's place in history.

When Walter died in 1973, Lotte withdrew from public life. However, she was three times honoured by his successor, Erich Honecker. Yet, in a rare interview, after German reunification, in 1990, she complained that "Honecker wasted my husband's inheritance".

She remained a member of the successor to the East German Communists, the PDS, until her death.

David Childs