[3] However, by the time she was 2 extensive ethnic cleansing in what had again become Poland in 1945 had already removed most of the German-speaking population, and she grew up in Wilhelmshaven on Germany's north-western coast.
It was from the university at Oldenburg that in 1978 she received her doctorate in Social Sciences,[5] and where till 1987 she stayed on as a researcher into topics such as family, education and industrial sociology.
In 1990 she changed her political allegiance again, joining the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), recently relaunched as a successor to the old East German Socialist Unity Party, as younger members of what had till recently been East Germany's ruling political establishment struggled to prepare for a democratic future, following the changes of 1989/90.
Reunification took place suddenly, formally, in October 1990, and during the rest of that year it was still unusual for a western politician to join the PDS: most of the relatively small number who did so came not from the West German Communist Party but from the SPD.
She stood as a list-candidate from the "Aschersleben–Bernburg–Quedlinburg" electoral district where the party failed to clear the 5% hurdle necessary to send members to the Bundestag.
Other themes in which she took a particular interest included pensions policy, family matters and gender equality, both in the workplace and more widely.
She also engaged with more overtly feminist agenda issues such as the ongoing debates about abortion legislation, an issue on respect of which the country had inherited more conventionally "liberal" laws from communist East Germany than from capitalist West Germany.
Breaking through to 5% hurdle significantly increased the party's strength in the Bundestag, notably in respect of appointments to parliamentary committees.
[6] The PDS group were now able to send her as a full member to the Bundestag committee for "Labour and Social Affairs", of which till October 2000 she served as a deputy chairwoman.
[12] Between 17 January 2002 and November 2006 Heid Knake-Werner served as the Berlin senator for Health, Social affairs and Consumer protection.
[2][13] In October 2010 she was elected to chair the Berlin region Volkssolidarität ("People's Solidarity"), a welfare organisation for the over 65s which traces its origins back to East Berlin and the old German Democratic Republic, but which survived the traumas of reunification better than most of the state mandated East German institutions.