After 1933 Nischwitz was taken into protective custody on several occasions during the Nazi years and placed under police surveillance . Despite her communist past she nevertheless survived , and after the regime collapsed in the wake of military defeat she rejoined the Communist Party in 1945 . Based on agreements between the victorious powers the western two thirds of Germany were now to be divided into military zones of occupation . The large central chunk that included Saxony was administered as the Soviet occupation zone . As a response to the widespread belief that the Nazis had been able to take power in 1933 only because of divisions between the parties of the left , a new political party , the Socialist Unity Party ( '' " Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands " '' / SED ) , was formed in April 1946 through a contentious merger involving the Communists and Social Democrats . Although there may have been hopes that the SED would take root across Germany , in reality the effect of the exercise was restricted to the Soviet zone . Margarete Nischwitz was one of thousands of comrades who lost little time in signing their party memberships over from the Communist Party to the new SED . However , her party activities were now restricted to low level duties . In October 1949 the Soviet occupation zone was relaunched as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic ( East Germany ) . Nischwitz was celebrated as a " party veteran " , being a recipient in 1976 of the Patriotic Order of Merit in gold
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Margarete Nischwitz