Kate Niederkirchner

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Käte Niederkirchner (left, 1987)

Käte Niederkirchner (born January 30, 1944 in Chelyabinsk ; † November 19, 2019 in Berlin ) was a German politician ( SED and PDS ) and a pediatrician. She was the niece of especially in the GDR became known resistance fighter Käthe Niederkirchnerstraße .

Life

Käte Niederkirchner was born under the name Käte Appel on January 30, 1944 in Chelyabinsk on the Urals . Appel was the father's code name . Kate's parents were Karl Dienstbach from Frankfurt am Main and Mia Niederkirchner , a daughter of Michael Niederkirchner . The parents met in the Moscow Hotel Lux and later worked for the NKFD in POW camps.

When the mother was six months pregnant with Käte, her older sister Käthe Niederkirchner said goodbye to a risky assignment as an armed Moscow parachutist with the Berlin operations area. Mia Niederkirchner promised: "When it becomes a girl, it's called Kate." After the Niederkirchners returned to Germany, Kate's father again took his real name Dienstbach, and Kate received this family name.

In the course of the increasing admiration of the anti-fascist resistance fighters in the GDR, Käte Niederkirchner was taken early by her mother to memorial events in honor of her aunt Käthe, who was often referred to by the Russian nickname Katja. As a close relative of this resistance fighter, she often took part in meetings with institutional namesake such as work collectives, brigades and members of public institutions. After passing the Abitur at the Berlin Käthe-Kollwitz-Oberschule , Käte Dienstbach began studying medicine at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1963 , which she completed in 1969. During her studies she was won by the FDJ as a candidate for the 6th electoral term of the People's Chamber . In 1965 she became a member of the SED . After the Volkskammer elections in 1967, the meanwhile married Käte, she married her fellow student Jürgen Sima, who later became chief physician at the Berlin-Weißensee Hospital , as Berlin representative of the Volkskammer for the FDJ parliamentary group. At that time she was one of the youngest MPs at the age of 23 and initially sat on the Committee for Popular Education until 1976. While Käte Sima was writing her doctoral thesis after graduating, she was employed full-time at the Central Council of the FDJ until she got a position as a doctor at the Berlin Charité in 1970 . There she was initially trained as a specialist in paediatrics . In 1972 Käte Sima had a daughter. In 1977 Käte Sima divorced. At that time she was already working as a pediatrician . She successfully completed this training in 1976. Since 1976 she has been a member of the People’s Chamber's Health Care Committee.

Since a distant relative of the Niederkirchners used this surname in the GDR very much to his own advantage and in correspondence with name bearers presented himself as the official representative of the Niederkirchners, the family decided to reintroduce the name Niederkirchner into the family name. From then on Käte Sima was now called Käte Sima-Niederkirchner. Under this name she was again a member of the People's Chamber in 1981, now belonging to the SED parliamentary group. At the end of the 1980s, Käte Sima-Niederkirchner changed her name to Käte Niederkirchner. On November 13, 1989, Käte Niederkirchner became a member of the newly elected Volkskammer presidium. In January 1990 she inherited Werner Jarowinsky as Deputy President of the People's Chamber. She ran again for the Volkskammer elections on March 18, 1990 and was elected as a member of the PDS . In the first meeting of the newly constituting People's Chamber, she was elected as a representative of the PDS as one of the Vice-Presidents of the People's Chamber. She received the most votes from all candidates.

In the professional field, Käte Niederkirchner opened her own practice as a pediatrician.

She decided against the offer of the PDS to run for the Bundestag and instead continued her education as a specialist doctor with additional training in child psychotherapy .

After a long and serious illness, Käte Niederkirchner died on November 19, 2019 in a hospital in Berlin-Lichtenberg.

literature

  • Christopher Hausmann: Biographical Handbook of the 10th People's Chamber of the GDR (1990) . Böhlau-Verlag: Cologne 1999
  • Secretariat of the People's Chamber on behalf of the President of the People's Chamber of the GDR (Ed.) The People's Chamber of the German Democratic Republic: 9th electoral period . State Publishing House of the GDR: Berlin 1987.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Niederkirchner, Kate
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Appel, Kate; Dienstbach, Kate; Sima, Kate; Sima-Niederkirchner, Kate
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pediatrician and politician (PDS), MdV, Vice-President of the first freely elected People's Chamber of the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH January 30, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Chelyabinsk
DATE OF DEATH 19th November 2019
Place of death Berlin