Else Ackermann (6 November 1933 – 14 September 2019) was a German physician and pharmacologist who became an East German politician (Christian Democratic Union of Germany). The report on the power relationships between the citizen and the state which she drafted, and in 1988 presented, known as the "Neuenhagen Letter", was a significant precursor to the changes of 1989 which led to the ending, in the early summer of 1990, of the one-party system, followed by German reunification later that same year. Life Career Ackermann was born in Berlin towards the end of 1933, the year during which Germany transitioned to one- party dictatorship. Her father was a railway official: her mother was a nurse. Ackermann passed her secondary school final exams (Abitur) at the "Einstein Upper School" in the Berlin suburb of Neuenhagen in 1952 which opened the way to a university-level education. In September of that same year she moved on to the Charité clinic which was, and remains, in effect the medical faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin, where she studied medicine. After the Second World War the entire eastern part of Berlin, which included Humboldt University, had ended up administered as part of the Soviet occupation zone after 1949. Ackermann passed her state medical exams in 1957 and received her doctorate in medicine in 1958. During this period, between 1957 and 1959, she undertook her clinical training in a hospital. That was followed by a training in pharmacology and toxicology while working as an academic assistant at the Charité between 1960 and 1965. During 1965 she relocated to Dresden, appointed to a position as a senior research assistant at the "Carl Gustav Carus" Medical Academy (as it was known at that time) where she remained for a decade, until 1975. During this period in 1969 she obtained her habilitation. This was the first habilitation awarded for Clinical Pharmacology in Germany, and she received it for work on "Microsomal electron transport in the human liver". After that, in 1971 she received a full lectureship at the "Carl Gustav Carus" academy. Returning to the Berlin area, between 1975 and 1989 Ackermann worked as a senior research assistant with the Central Institute for Cancer Research at the (East) German Academy of Sciences, based in the Buch quarter, in the northern part of Berlin. She was able to combine the research work at the Cancer Research Institute with a