She was active in the West German student movement as a member of the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund.
[1] In 1945, when she was four years old, her family fled from their home in Saxony during the expulsion of the Germans by the Soviet Army and settled in West Berlin with some of their relatives.
[2] Henckel von Donnersmarck was active in the West German student movement, a left-wing social movement consisting of mass student protests in West Germany rejecting traditionalism and opposing the German political authority's inclusion of former Nazi officials in government.
[2] She joined the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund, formerly the collegiate branch of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, that became affiliated with the Außerparlamentarische Opposition, which called for constitutional freedom of opinion and press, the freedom of assembly, and the democratization of university politics.
[citation needed] They had two children: She and her family moved to the United States in the mid-1970s and settled in Roosevelt Island in New York City's East River.