[2] In 1947 she joined the Socialist Unity Party ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" / SED), recently launched in preparation for the reinvention in 1949 of the entire occupation zone as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic.
Between 1948 and 1953 she worked as a volunteer reporter and journalist on the SED's mass circulation daily newspaper, Neues Deutschland.
[2] In the wake of the events surrounding the brutally suppressed uprising of June 1953 there was discussion of replacing Walter Ulbricht as East Germany's leader.
The death of Stalin three months earlier had left the East German leadership in a state of heightened nervousness, and it was not entirely clear who the new leaders in Moscow would be, nor how firm their support for Ulbricht might be.
Her reputation at this time was as an economics journalist, which may have made her appointment to run a women's magazine appear slightly strange, but she remained in post for ten years, so presumably the authorities were happy with her stewardship.