Regine Hildebrandt (née Radischewski; 26 April 1941 – 26 November 2001) was a German biologist and politician (Social Democratic Party of Germany).

[4] In October 1961 she co-founded and joined the interdenominational choir at Berlin's (Protestant) Cathedral, which now flourished under the musical direction of a man called Herbert Hildebrand.

[5] Between 1964 and 1978 Regine Radischewski worked in a management position involving Quality Control in the pharmacology department of VEB Berlin-Chemie, a major conglomerate in East Berlin.

Regine Hildebrand did join the national Trade Union Federation (FDGB/Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund) because not to have done so would have deprived her research colleagues of vital funding.

[5] When fraternal tanks appeared on the streets of Prague to crush political reform, the Hildebrandts joined in a protest demonstration outside the Czechoslovak embassy in Berlin.

[5] Hildebrand assiduously read Neues Deutschland and followed other official media, if only to keep herself up to date with The Party's politically correct linguistic contrivances of the moment.

[5] The summer of 1989 brought a dramatic change in her life when she, together with her husband, Jörg, was among the co-founders of Democracy Now, which sought an alliance of Christians and critical Marxists "to think about our future, to think about a society based on solidarity".

[5] The Hildebrandts valued the embracing compassionate socialism of the moderate left which had been nurtured and demonstrated by iconic (western) SPD figures from the recent past such as Kurt Schumacher and Willy Brandt.

She also joined the coalition government of Lothar de Maizière, serving between April and August 1990 as the East German Minister for Labour and Social Affairs.

[5] She was a popular and effective minister, often hitting the headlines with less than diplomatic outbursts, always charmingly reasonable but also forcefully persuasive with key colleagues when, as often happened, issues within her ministerial ambit came down to arguments about funding.

[3] In the 1999 Brandenburg state election the Social Democrats lost their absolute majority[9] and minister-president Manfred Stolpe prepared to form a "grand coalition" with the centre-right CDU party.