[1][2][3] In 1990 she served, improbably as she thought, both at the time and subsequently, as the chair of the 50 member Electoral Commission appointed to supervise East Germany's first (and last) freely held and fairly administered general election.

[4][5] Petra Bläss was born in Leipzig which at that time was in the heavily urbanised southern part of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

[5] Political changes accelerated during 1989 and 1990 along with accompanying uncertainty: the university let her know early in 1989 that after she had obtained her doctorate it did not expect to offer her a job, and she spent a year or so looking for suitable work in the theatre, the arts or the media, but without immediate success.

No less a person than the new prime minister, Hans Modrow himself, after first asking if he might address her as "Petra" (rather than as "Miss Bläss"), when he congratulated her on the appointment also made clear his belief that, where the opportunity presented itself, one must do something in uncertain times to support national stability, if only in order to avoid the question from members of future generations, "Why did you do nothing?".

Following the electoral success in March 1990 of the CDU in East Germany, an unstoppable momentum developed towards reunification, but the political backdrop for the re-appearance of democracy in the German Democratic Republic was seen by many activists in 1989 to have more to do with Mikhail Gorbachev than with Helmut Kohl.

Petra Bläss was one of many thoughtful East Germans who harboured reservations about the steam-roller progress to a united Germany, and expressed her outrage when the first draft of the reunification treaty mentioned in just one very dismissive sentence "the needs of women and the disabled".

[5] In June 1990 she finally abandoned any prospect of completing her doctoral dissertation,[5] taking an editorial job with DFF, the East German state broadcasting corporation.

[6] Her largest series of projects arose from Germany's contribution to the Balkans Stability Pact, and has involved advising, initially, on parliamentary structures and institutions in the various countries formerly in Yugoslavia and, more recently, in Albania.

After she switched her focus towards Albania she combined advising on parliamentary matters in Tirana with teaching a course on Gender studies at a university in the southeast of the country.