[1] By the time her mother crossed over to the German Federal Republic (West Germany), the government of East Germany, under pressure from an acute labour shortage resulting from the slaughter of war and massive emigration, was taking active steps to discourage "Republikflucht", and as a result of her mother's "desertion" Brigitte Zimmermann was blocked in her progress from her school final exams ("Abitur") to university-level studies.
As recently as 2015 Zimmermann emerged from semi-retirement to provide for Junge Welt a tribute to Jutta Resch-Treuwerth, a distinguished former colleague on the paper who died in February of that year.
[1] After her time at Junge Welt, between 1978 and 1982 Zimmermann worked with the Central Council of the FDJ, which made her a professional colleague of Egon Krenz who later emerged as the national leader.
Confronted with a new palette of competition from the newspapers in what had previously been West Germany, Wochenpost experienced a rapid drop in circulation, and a number of the less outstanding journalists had to be replaced.
She served as deputy managing editor at Neues Deutschland between September 1992 and June 1999 at which point, shortly after reaching her sixtieth birthday, she embarked on a career as a freelance journalist.