Yvonne-Ruth Killmer

Yvonne Ruth Killmer (born Yvonne-Ruth Freyer: 12 September 1921 – 27 September 2014) was an East German journalist and party official. During the 1960s she served as head of the government press office. She later became editor in chief of Freies Wort, a mass circulation party newspaper. Subsequently she became the first editor in chief at the women's magazine, Für Dich. Between 1968 and 1983 she was as editor in chief of the East German bi-monthly fashion magazine, Sibylle.

Early life and education Yvonne-Ruth Freyer was born in Berlin at the "Urban Krankenhaus" (district hospital). Her mother later recalled that there was a strike running at the time, as a result of which the water and electricity supplies had been cut: Killmer told people she had been born by candle light. "Für Dich" had few obvious rivals and, at its peak, achieved a circulation in East Germany of almost a million copies.

Personal life In October 1981 Yvonne-Ruth Freyer married the journalist Lothar „Kolja“ Killmer (1919–2000). It was her first marriage and his second. Her husband's first wife, Anja Killmer-Korn, had died five months earlier. Anja, who came originally from Vienna, had been a resistance activist during the Hitler years and was twenty-three years older than her husband. Yvonne-Ruth had known both of them since 1946, having met "Kolja" Killmer on a course back then. There are suggestions that she had come close to becoming his first wife, before having to relocate from Saxony in order to spend a term at the Karl-Marx Party Academy near Berlin. Although she was already 60, and her husband 62, when they married, the two of them went on to enjoy 18 years of marriage together.