Gisela Glende

Gisela Trautzsch was born in Lengefeld, a small town at the heart of the mining region south of Chemnitz. As the niece of the Communist activist Walter Trautzsch, she grew up in a highly politicised working-class family.[3] Her father was a metal worker.[1] She attended school locally and then completed a "commercial" training at the vocational secondary school. After that she took a clerical job at the Kunstharzpresserei plant in Lengefeld.[1]

War ended in May 1945. A large central portion of Germany, including her home region, was now administered as the Soviet occupation zone. Membership of the Communist Party was no longer illegal, and despite not yet being 21, Gisela Trautzsch joined it. In April 1946 a contentious political merger resulted (if only, for most purposes, within the Soviet occupation zone) in the formation of a new political party, the Socialist Unity Party ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" / SED), and she was one of thousands of Communist Party members happy to sign their party membership across to a new united party of the left which many believed would ensure avoidance of a return to one-party dictatorship.[1]

Between 1945 and 1948 Gisela Trautzsch was employed by the party leadership team for her local region of Marienberg ("KPD/SED -Kresileitung Marienberg") as a typist and as head of the personnel department. By 1948 she had also become secretary for Agitation and Propaganda with the Marienberg local party. During 1949/50 she undertook a study course (by correspondence course) with the Karl Marx Party Academy. That opened the way to a job in Berlin, where she was based by 1951. Later, between 1955 and 1960, she undertook a longer remote study course with the Karl Marx Party Academy which led to the award of a degree in Social Sciences in 1960.[1]

Between 1951 and 1968 she was employed as a deputy head of the Politburo office. After the death of Otto Schön in September 1968, Gisela Glende succeeded him as head of the office.[1] A few years later, in 1971, she herself became a member of the powerful Party Central Committee. She remained in post till September 1986 when she was degraded sideways and downwards in what was seen by commentators as an attempt by the leadership to try and rejuvenate the politburo and indeed the Central Committee more widely.[4] Between 1986 and 1989 she served on the party's National Audit Commission ("Zentrale Revisionskommission").[1]

Gisela Trautzsch married Günter Glende (1918–2004) in 1973. She died in Berlin a few months after her ninetieth birthday.[5]