Ilse Stephan

Ilse Stephan ( Korth; 8 May 1931 – 25 June 1984) was an East German interpreter and party functionary of the Socialist Unity Party (SED).

Stephan, whose stepfather was a communist functionary, emigrated to the Soviet Union after Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Her stepfather became a victim of the Great Purge and she was deported to the Kazakh SSR.

She returned to East Germany in 1955, where she became an interpreter and party functionary for the Central Committee of the SED. One of only a handful of women in the SED's nomenklatura, Stephan rose to head the Central Committee's General Department Working Group in 1981 and served as Erich Honecker's chief interpreter.

Stephan was fired in 1984 after making critical remarks regarding tensions between the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the SED and committed suicide shortly thereafter.

Life and career Early life and family Stephan was born in Hamburg on 8 May 1931 as Ilse Korth. Her stepfather was Heinrich "Heino" Meyer, a teacher and local functionary of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in Hamburg.

After Hitler came to power, Meyer was arrested in December 1932 and Korth, under the cover name "Gerda Zinke", emigrated with her mother to the Soviet Union in December 1933. returned to what was now East Germany in October 1955 with her widowed mother and began working as a Russian language interpreter. She applied to join the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) in November of the same year.

She became an employee of the General Department of the Central Committee of the SED, among other things translating CPSU publications. From 1971 to 1972, she attended a one-year course at the CPSU Higher Party School "W. I. Lenin" in Moscow. She only held the rank of a deputy department head as the General Department was simultaneously downgraded to the "General Department Working Group".

Downfall and death

Stephan eventually found herself caught in the increasing tensions between the CPSU and the SED. Honecker accused her of being at fault for these tensions for allegedly mistranslating during a June 1984 visit to CPSU General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko,

She was buried in Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery alongside her mother.