Carola Bluhm

Carola Bluhm (formerly Carola Freundl; born 16 November 1962) is a German politician (Die Linke). Since 1991 she has been a member of the Berlin House of Representatives. In 2009 she became a member of the Senate of Berlin in which, between 16 October 2009 and 2011, she served as senator for Integration, Work and Social Affairs in the Red–red coalition administration of Klaus Wowereit.

Carola Freundl was her married name. However, following the break up of her marriage she announced in 2005 that she was reverting to her maiden name.

Life Carola Bluhm was born in East Berlin. Her parents were both lawyers. Despite spending her first two and a half decades in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), she grew up in an "open academic household" where "critical debate [on the issues of the time] took place every day". By her own account, she was encouraged to think for herself, an attitude of mind which later found its way into her political approach. She undertook a vocational education at school, passing her school leaving exams (Abitur) in 1982. This opened the way for a career in fruit and vegetable production, a valued profession in a country where, at least in the cities, fresh produce was usually in short supply. The experience was formative. After ten years at school in Berlin with the same classmates she was based in Brandenburg an der Havel, for the first time away from the capital and working with new colleagues. Ruefully she would look back on the apple harvest period when comrades started work sometimes as early as 04.00 in the morning each day, not taking time off at weekends, in order to harvest the apples with a teutonic determination to ensure that apples sorted and packed were of perfect quality, only to suffer the bitter experience of seeing their work become pointless as the fruit deteriorated in the crates because of logistical failures whereby the authorities were unable to arrange timely transportation to the shops. She joined the party in 1982 Between 1987 and 1991 she was employed as a research assistant at the Institute for Socialist Economic Management at the Berlin Economics Academy ("Hochschule für Ökonomie Berlin").

Matters came to a head after November 1989 when protesters breached the wall and it became apparent that the fraternal Soviet forces had no instructions to suppress the street protests by force, as they had in 1953 (and, more recently, in Prague in 1968). A succession of seemingly unstoppable events were set in train, leading to East Germany's first (and as matters turned out last) free and fair election in March 1990 and then, formally in October 1990, German reunification. At the hitherto important Berlin Economics Academy Carola Bluhm's career prospects disappeared. In 1990 she was informed succinctly in writing that she was being temporarily laid off ("in Warteschleife geschickt") and six months later, her job disappeared permanently (although according to her own website she remained, at least formally, an employee of the Berlin Economics Academy till early in 1991). Unemployment, hitherto a theoretical issue that she had researched and on which she had taught as an academic, became her personal reality. Between 2006 and 2009 she was herself chair of the PDS parliamentary group in the assembly. At the 2011 local election the Red–red coalition lost its majority. The PDS went into opposition while city governance passed to a grand coalition of the SPD and CDU. Bluhm, with the other PDS senators, accordingly resigned her senatorial responsibilities. The party recovered its position in the 2016 state election and returned to city governance. Bluhm now returned, albeit briefly, to her position as chair of the party group in the assembly, this time jointly with Udo Wolf.