Helene Berg

Helene "Lene" Berg born Helene Veser (10 April 1906 – 21 February 2006) was a German communist politician and a resistance activist against National Socialism. Between 1958 and 1989 she was a member of the Central Committee of the ruling SED (party) in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), where she was also director of the Berlin-based Academy for Social Sciences.

Till 1928 Veser held her KJVD Baden regional leadership position. Then she relocated to Moscow where she attended the International Lenin School till 1931, for prisoners of war at Taliza, while still continuing to teach at the party academy in Moscow.

Back to (East) Germany In April 1946 Berg returned to Germany, settling in the Soviet occupation zone which by now was in the process of becoming the German Democratic Republic. Berg became a member of the new country's ruling SED (party) and took a position as a teacher at the prestigious Karl Marx Academy in Liebenwalde. Between 1946 and 1951 she undertook various functions in the party's regional leadership in Saxony-Anhalt, working closely with Bernard Koenen. In 1951 she briefly became acting director of the Karl Marx Academy, before accepting a professorial directorship at the Party Central Committee's Social Sciences Institute, remaining in this post till 1958.

From 1954 till 1958 Berg was a candidate for the party central committee, which she joined in 1958, retaining her membership till 1989. Between 1958 and 1971 she was the German party's editor and representative for the Prague based international ideological newspaper World Marxist Review (WMR / "Problems of Peace and socialism" / "Проблемы мира и социализма"). Between 1972 and 1974 she was deputy director of the party's central committee's Opinion Research Institute, succeeding the institute's founder-director, Karl Maron, in 1974. She left that position in 1979, when the Institute was abolished on the instigation of Erich Honecker, who believed opinion research to be "manipulative". She thereafter acted as a consultant to the Central Committee's International Relations Department.

In 1990, following German reunification, the old East German SED (Party) was succeeded by the PDS, and Berg became a member of the reborn party's "Council of old people".

Personal Berg was married to East Germany's first Minister for Education, Paul Wandel. He died in 1995 but she died just seven weeks short of her one hundredth birthday on 21 February 2006.

Awards 1955 Clara Zetkin Medal 1956 Patriotic Order of Merit in Silver 1965 Banner of Labor 1966 Order of Karl Marx 1968 Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold 1971 Patriotic Order of Merit - Gold Honour clip 1976 Honorary doctorate from the Social Sciences Academy of the Party Central Committee 1976 Star of People's Friendship in Gold 1981 Great Star of People's Friendship in Gold