Yvonne Ruth Killmer (born Yvonne-Ruth Freyer: 12 September 1921 – 27 September 2014) was a successful 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". Her last big job, between 1968 and 1983, was as editor in chief with the East German bi-monthly fashion magazine, "Sibylle". Life 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: she liked to tell people she had been born by candle light. Her parents were committed socialists and Yvonne-Ruth would later be able to look back with pride on a highly politicised upbringing. Erich Freyer, her father was a book dealer who had recently taken on an artisanal publishing business from the socialist activist Adolph Hoffmann. (The printing press had been used in 1891 to produce Hoffmann's at the time still famous / notorious pamphlet "Die zehn Gebote und die besitzende Klasse" - "The ten commandments and the property-owning classes".} In January 1933 the National Socialists took power and rapidly transformed Germany into a one-party dictatorship. As well networked Berlin socialists with their own printing press it quickly became obvious that the Freyers would find themselves attracting the intense interest of the security services: later during 1933 they emigrated to Amsterdam where between 1933 and 1935 Yvonne-Ruth attended upper school. Her parents subsequently moved again, this time to France, while she returned to Germany, where between 1935 and 1938 she lived with her grandmother in Glauchau, a small sleepy town in the hills beyond Leipzig. Till 1938 she attended the "Handelsschule" in Glauchau, where the curriculum would have been designed to prepare her for work in the world of business and commerce. Between 1937 and 1940 she undertook and completed an apprenticeship in office work. War had broken out in 1939, and from 1941 till 1943 Freyer worked as a typist at the Senior Aviation Engineering Academy ("Höheren Fliegertechnischen Schule") in Jüterbog. She was then employed as a typist, between 1943 and 1945, by Märkle & Kniesche, a tobacco products wholesaler in Leipzig. During the war she had