Margarete Wittkowski
Till 1931 she was active in the Zionist Movement, after which, following "discussions with leftist friends" her political energies were increasingly focused on the Communist Party, which she joined in September 1932.
She passed the oral element of her doctoral exam, for which she was supervised by Edgar Salin and Herman Schmalenbach, in February 1934, for work concerning the relationships between the big banks in Berlin and German industry.
It was their view that labour output was lower and the accident rate was higher than before 1933, and that earnings growth since then was attributable to monopoly practices, reduced raw material costs, a reduction in emphasis on consumer goods and an extension of working hours.
[1] In the spring of 1934, she moved to Berlin, where she co-produced a communist trades union newspaper with a like-minded comrade called Ullrich Fuchs.
She was also involved in distribution, according to one source making "frequent trips to "the southern Baden border area where she handed over illegal publications and messages".
Unlike many political refugees from Nazi Germany, there is no record of her having been interned as an enemy alien by the English when war broke out, which may well reflect her work with Kuczynski who had excellent connections with elements of the British establishment.
[3] The region surrounding the city was now administered as the Soviet occupation zone, although the contentious creation of the Socialist Unity Party ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" / SED) a couple of months earlier had already created a necessary precondition for its relaunch in October 1949 as a new kind of one-party dictatorship, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
Working closely with Bruno Leuschner, this involved a central role in devising the planned economic model for the new socialist German state.
[3] Whatever the reason for her removal from the German Economic Commission, it does appear that Wittkowski was respected for her formidable intellect, which unlike others she was sometimes willing to deploy in discussions involving Walter Ulbricht, the country's leader.
[6] After Stalin died, in March 1953, the East German party leadership became slightly less nervous, and in 1954 she was reinstated as deputy president of what had now become the State Planning Commission,[6] which gave her significant influence over national economic policy.
[2] Between 1956 and 1958, Wittkowski found herself increasingly out of line with the leadership, both because of differences over aspects of economic policy and because she sought to open a spirit of wider debate.
[3][9] In February 1958 the Central Committee plenum endorsed the orthodox line advocated by General Secretary Ulbricht: Wittkowski underwent a "temporary demotion".
She herself remained at this point outside the Party Central Committee Politburo, but her principal interlocutor within it was Werner Jarowinsky who had been a pupil of her old friend and literary collaborator, Jürgen Kuczynski.
In February 1961 she resigned from the State Planning Commission for the last time and took up a post as a deputy chair of the Council of Ministers, where her departmental responsibilities covered Trade, Supply, and Agriculture.
[2] Margarete Wittkowski's final big job, to which she was appointed in 1967, was the presidency of what was renamed, on 1 January 1968, the East German Central Bank (Staatsbank).
