Carola von Braun

Carola Freifrau von Braun (12 September 1942 – 7 August 2026) was a German politician, especially active for women's rights. A member of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), she served in the Bundestag from 1980 to 1983 and in the Senate of West Berlin from 1984 to 1990, as its first Women's Representative responsible for women's rights. She led the Berlin FDP from 1990 to 1994, and was a member of the Berlin House of Representatives from 1991 to 1994, where she headed the FDP fraction. She founded an independent women's initiative in Berlin in 1982 and held positions in the Protestant Church of Germany and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, among others.

Life and career Early life Von Braun was born in Nakuru, Colony of Kenya (present-day Kenya), then a British colony, on 12 September 1942, She was born during World War II, and her family lived in a Kenyan camp for an extended period. Her maternal grandmother, , died in the Barnimstraße women's prison, after she was accused of being in the resistance movement and being connected to a group that included Anton Saefkow and Franz Jacob. Her grandfather was a politician of the DNVP, Magnus von Braun, who served as minister in the Papen cabinet and the Schleicher cabinet during the last years of the Weimar Republic. Her uncle was the rocket engineer Wernher von Braun,

As a child, Carola lived with her mother and her siblings in Vatican City between 1944 and 1949. Her father was a legation secretary for Nazi Germany to the Vatican, and the family fled there when the Allies entered Rome.

Later, von Braun grew up in Bonn, where she completed the Abitur in 1961 at the Nicolaus-Cusanus-Gymnasium. In 1974 she joined the Free Democratic Party (FDP). She was active on education and cultural politics. and in 1982 opposed the termination of the coalition of the SPD and FDP in the third Helmut Schmidt cabinet.

In 1990, after German reunification, the FDP was the first party in Berlin to unite its groups from West and East, and she was elected party leader, although the majority of members came from the East. She was a member of the Berlin House of Representatives from 1991 to 1994,

Von Braun was head of the referate for education in the senate until 2005.

Awards 2010: Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 2015: 2021: 2026: Award from the Überparteiliche Fraueninitiative