Ursula Ragwitz

Ursula Ragwitz (born Ursula Rose; 15 February 1928 – 2020 ) was a senior official of the ruling East German Socialist Unity Party. She started her career as a primary school teacher, and rose to become a member of the powerful Party Central Committee between 1981 and 1989, undertaking various leadership roles in respect of the country's highly politicised culture sector.

Life Ursula Rose was born in Cottbus, historically the cultural centre of Germany's Sorbian ethnic minority. Her father worked as a driver. Between 1942 and 1945 she studied to become a teacher of German and music at the teacher training college in Exin (Kreis Bromberg), in a part of Germany that had been in Poland between 1920 and 1939, and would be transferred back to Poland in 1945. At the end of the war she moved back west as far as Spreewald where she was briefly employed as a probationary teacher at a small village school. From 1946 until 1951 she taught at a primary school in her birth city of Cottbus, since 1945 administered as part of the Soviet occupation zone. In October 1949 the Soviet occupation zone was relaunched as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic, a new form of German single party dictatorship, with the Socialist Unity Party ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" / SED), now effectively purged of former Social Democrats, installed as the new ruling party. Between 1951 and 1952 she taught at the Teacher Training Institute ("Institut für Lehrerbildung" / IfL) in Cottbus. There had been five Culture Department heads since 1957, but she would remain in the post until 1989. She also headed up the Politburo's Culture Commission between 1976 and 1989, and also, some contended, over authors in West Germany. The party's monopoly of various forms of patronage and sponsorship gave her the power to affect the material well-being of East German authors, such as, for instance, Stephan Hermlin. On top of that she was also given charge, by Central Committee Secretary Kurt Hager, of determining approval processes for foreign travel and performances by artists and she was given co-responsibility for the conditions under which the hugely popular books of Karl May (1842–1912) might be both published and produced as films.

Between 1981 and 3 December 1989 Ragwitz was herself a member of the Party Central Committee, which became of the leading role afforded the party under the Leninist structure built into the East German constitution placed her at the heart of the country's power apparatus.

After the demise of the German Democratic Republic Ragwitz lived with her husband as a pensioner in Berlin.

Awards and honours (not a complete list) 1980 Banner of Labor 1981 For People and Fatherland merit award 1985 Patriotic Order of Merit 1988 Patriotic Order of Merit Gold clasp 1988 Honorary Doctorate Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg