Her life was impacted by having been born with a famous aunt, the Communist resistance activist Käthe Niederkirchner who was killed by Nazi paramilitaries at Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944, and who was posthumously much celebrated by East Germany's political leadership.

Her father's name had been Karl Dienstbach when he had emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1932 in order to avoid the prison term to which he had been sentenced at a district court in Frankenthal following his conviction on a charge of industrial espionage.

Her parents had originally met in the Hotel Lux in Moscow, which during the Hitler years had become a vast hostel for exiled German communists.

As a close relative of this heroic figure she was frequently introduced to members of workers' collectives and brigades and to public officials at events arranged to highlight the renaming of a street or school or factory in honour of her aunt.

[1] It was also in 1967, still a Berlin medical student, that she was nominated for election to the East German parliament ("Volkskammer") as one of the 40 candidates representing the youth wing (FDJ) of the party (SED), listed at this stage as "Käte Dienstbach".

Her position on the issue, as a doctor, was increasingly opposed to abortion, having had first-hand experience through her work of the adverse health consequences to which it can lead.

[3] During 1969/70, after receiving her first degree, and while working on her doctoral dissertation, Käte Sima took a fulltime job with the governing Central Council of the Young Socialist organisation (FDJ), serving as FDJ-secretary for the university medical faculty.

At around the same time she self-diagnosed as an ADHD sufferer: On 18 March 1990 the German Democratic Republic held the first (and last) free and fair parliamentary election in the history of the country as a separate state.

Käte Niederkirchner again stood as a candidate and was elected as a PDS member of the new parliament, representing the Berlin electoral district.

Reunification took place, formally, on 3 October 1990, which involved the merging of the parliaments of East and West Germany according to a population based formula.

144 members of the old East German Volkskammer, including 24 from the PDS joined a newly enlarged Bundestag (parliament) based (at this stage) in Bonn.