[citation needed] Hilde Benjamin is particularly known for being responsible for the politically motivated prosecution of Erna Dorn and Ernst Jennrich.

[6] Growing up in the culturally inclined liberal ambience of a middle-class family awakened in her an early interest in classical music and German literature: this would stay with her throughout her life.

Briefly jobless, with her husband removed to a concentration camp (from which, on this occasion, he was released later in the year) directly after the Reichstag fire, she returned for a time to live with her parents along with her small son: she then obtained a position providing legal advice for the Soviet trade association in Berlin.

After the war, she joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in 1946 and was vice president of the Supreme Court of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from 1949 to 1953.

From 1967 to her death, she held the chair for the history of the judiciary at the Deutsche Akademie für Staats- und Rechtswissenschaft in Potsdam-Babelsberg.