Gisela Steineckert

Gisela Steineckert (born 13 May 1931) is a German writer known for her books and song lyrics. She has also written numerous radio plays and several film scripts.

A member of the East German arts establishment, she served as national "President of the Entertainment Committee" following the retirement, in 1984, of Siegfried Wagner. Her unforced support for the East German system before reunification has drawn hostility from writers and artists who found themselves persecuted by the régime: Bettina Wegner dismissively opines of her supervisory duties with the October Club (state sponsored song performance association) during the 1980s that Steineckert was the chief censor ("Das war die Oberzensorin").

Life Provenance and early years Giesela Steineckert was born in Berlin, her parents' second daughter. Soon after this they were joined by their mother and the youngest child. while continuing, through the mid-1960s, to produce more screen plays. In this context she worked closely with a number of musicians, writing lyrics for songs in the "easy listening" "Schlager" and "Chanson" styles as well as for children. Her close and enduring collaboration with Jürgen Walter originated during this period. This coincided with a rapid diminution in her involvement with the Song Movement, and by the end of the decade Penndorf had also stepped back from his career as a radio editor.

In 1973 she became a member of the national Committee for Entertainment Arts, which had been set up in 1973 as a consultative body to support the Ministry of Culture, but which was by this time being seen as an officially endorsed advocacy group operating on behalf of the entertainment arts establishment. In 1984 the committee was reconfigured, and Gisela Steineckert became its president for the next six years.

Later years During the 1980s she continued a writer of books and articles, also undertaking an ill-defined mentoring role, along with the composer Wolfram Heicking, of the "October club". In 1990 she became an honorary president of the Democratic Women's League ("Demokratischer Frauenbund Deutschlands"/ DFD), a position she has retained through the ensuing dramatic changes to that formerly East German bastion of socialist womanhood. Directly after reunification she fell out of fashion, and it became hard for her to find a publisher, while some of her existing books were cleared from the shelves to make space for suddenly available and fashionable western authors; but in Steineckert's case the fall from public favour proved relatively short-lived, especially in the eastern parts of Germany that had previously been the German Democratic Republic. New songs were written in collaboration with various musicians and she also continues to tour regularly, giving readings of her prose and poetry. Meanwhile, she found a loyal publisher for her books in the newly reinvented Eulenspiegel Verlag publishing group.

Awards and honours 1981 Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze 1987 National Prize of the German Democratic Republic for Arts and Literature