Her parliamentary career ended in May 1992 after it had become known that fifteen years earlier she had worked for the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) as a registered informant ("inoffizieller Mitarbeiter").
[1][2][3][4] Jutta Czichotzke was born in Barth, a small town close to the northern coast of a region which at that time was administered as Germany's Soviet occupation zone.
She passed her school final exams (Abitur) and the local sixth form college and moved on to work in industry, first in Stralsund and later in Berlin.
In August 1968 the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces shocked her deeply: she became increasingly concerned with the way in which the identity of the officially identified "class enemy" changed over time.
[2] This aspect of her life became public knowledge only in 1991 after German reunification which led to Stasi archives being opened up to the scrutiny of scholars, journalists, and citizens.
Braband herself believed at the time that information she provided to her Stasi handlers was of little importance, but she nevertheless took the slightly unusually step of expressly ending her collaboration after four years.
[2] Around 1975, deciding that work could and should be fun, she embarked on a career as a freelance textiles and fashion designer, starting with a period as a trainee hand-weaver at a Berlin workshop.
Braband felt personally affected by the overtly political trials of Rupert Schröter and Rudi Molt, the house arrest of Robert Havemann and the sentencing of Rudolf Bahro.
[7] In 1979 Braband and her friends learned that ten authors had been expelled from the German Writers' Association ("Deutscher Schriftstellerverband") because they had publicly opposed official criticism.
Jutta Braband, together with Thomas Klein and Stefan Fechner, reacted by drafting a joint letter of protest addressed to Erich Honecker, the country's leader, and soliciting others to join them in signing it.
She would later pay tribute to the courage displayed by the VBK admissions panel which accepted her application in the face of significant official opposition to it.
[7] During the mid-1980s the winds of Perestroika blowing from, of all places, Moscow, allowed people to hope that a more democratic socialist future, with a less monolithic and oppressive political structure might become an option for East Germany.
Developments in Moscow certainly undermined the confidence of the leadership in East Berlin, but from the perspective of citizens such as Braband the government response was one of increasing repression.
During 1989 what the authorities perceived as a dangerous and apparently unstoppable growth in street protests was seen by Jutta Braband (and many others), as a desperate response to government repression, above all on the part of young people.
On 3 October 1989 Braband's own young teenage daughter was one of approximately 6,000 protesters who invaded the grounds of the Czechoslovak embassy in a desperate attempt to obtain permissions necessary escape from East Germany via Czechoslovakia, just as Communist victims of Nazi persecution had done more than half a century earlier.
She was opposed to what she saw as the west's masculine value system and the dominating role assigned to money, which perverted the possibilities for personal development.
[7][9] She was keen to work with others completely to democratise the "German Democratic Republic", and to ensure that fellow citizens were fully empowered through being informed about political developments.
[1] However, in September 1991 she contributed an article to the newspaper Neues Deutschland that included a very public disclosure that for four years in her early 20s she had been in the pay of the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) as an informant ("inoffizieller Mitarbeiter" / IM).