Family provenance and early years Helene Kirsch was born in the
Johannisthal quarter of
Berlin. She was one of between seven and nine recorded children born to Hermann Kirsch, variously described as a building worker, an industrial worker and an agricultural worker. Otto Kirsch and Emilie Kirsch. Helene Kirsch attended junior school locally in
Johannisthal and then obtained work as an assembly worker at the Lorenz Telephone Relay Company in
Tempelhof. and was a delegate to the party's first and second congresses of working women. Kirsch was given a prison term of two years and nine months. She was taken to serve her sentence at the Women's Prison in
Jauer. and Marta Wagner. This involved missions to get hold of food and money for resistance fighters living illegally in Berlin.
Soviet occupation zone (1945–1949) War ended in May 1945 and Helene Fredrich, as she was now calling herself, lost no time in signing up to the newly relegimitized
Communist Party and in June 1945 she was mandated by the party to organise women's work in the party, with the title "District Women's Leader" (
"Kreisfrauenleiterin ") in
Berlin Wedding. Later her regional responsibilities in this post were switched to cover, jointly with Emmi Plinz, the entire Brandenburg region, which involved relocating a short distance, to
Potsdam. However, she resigned from this job on health grounds in March 1947. Her successor was . Helene Fredrich returned to Berlin. In April 1946 she was a delegate at the conference which led to the
controversial creation of the
Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands / SED). After the war, with what remained of Germany divided into
military occupation zones, the central portion of the country, surrounding Berlin, was
administered as the
Soviet occupation zone. By the time when, in October 1949, the entire zone was relaunched as the
Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic (East Germany), the creation of the SED would be seen as a necessary pre-condition for a return to
one-party dictatorship. Following the establishment of the SED, Fredrich was appointed a member of the
Brandenburg regional parliament (Landtag), remaining a member till 1950. Regional parliaments were abolished outright two years later as part of a process to streamline and centralise administration and control: while she was a member of it, it appears to have taken up relatively little of her time.
German Democratic Republic (1949–1989) There is relatively little information on the final decades of her life in the available sources. After 1947 she had a job as a spokesperson in the party central secretariat. She was employed by the important Central Committee of the
ruling SED (party) till 1972, working in its "West Department" which was concerned with the critical but difficult relationship between East and West Germany.
Final years By the time of her death in 1999, Helene Kirsch-Fredrich had comfortably outlived the German Democratic Republic. Relatively little information exists about her private life. Günter Wehner quotes people who knew her who thought her "gregarious and outgoing" (
"gesellige und kontaktfreudige"), and also found her "energetic and focused" (
"energisch und durchsetzungsfähig"). == Awards and honours ==