Helga Hörz

Helga Hörz (born Helga Ivertowski, 27 July 1935) is a German Marxist philosopher and women's rights activist.

He was also an anti-government activist, and one of a group arrested in 1938 (or 1939) and detained on account of "antifascist activities" (in the phrase favoured by East German sources).

The detainees faced trial at the special people's court in Berlin in 1940.

Four group members were sentenced to death.

Her mother was left to bring up their daughters in wartime Danzig where in 1942 she started school.

Caught up in the ethnic cleansing of 1944/45 Maria Ivertowski and her daughters struggled to make their way towards the west, ending up in Nauen, a short distance to the west of Berlin and after May 1945 in the part of Germany administered as the Soviet occupation zone.

It was here that the family were reunited with their father, although the marriage of Paul and Maria Ivertowski later ended in divorce.

She grew up and completed her schooling in Nauen.

Paul Ivertowski was sentenced to imprisonment for life and spent the war years at the concentration camps in Dachau and, later, Mauthausen, from where he was released by US troops in May 1945.

In October 1949 the Soviet occupation zone was relaunched as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic (East Germany) Passing her school final exams (Abitur) opened the way to university-level education, and she progressed to Berlin's Humboldt University (HUB) where she studied Philosophy, Ethics and Psychology.

In 1954, still aged only 19, she married fellow philosophy student.

After completing her first degree she became active as a trades union official (3rd secretary for agitation and propaganda) in youth work while working between 1957 and 1959, in the huge "Narva" (as the company would later be known) light bulb plant in East Berlin.

Sources indicate that she would have preferred, as her husband had done, to continue with her academic career, but - despite her husband's support - as a newly married woman with young children this possibility was not immediately open to her even in East Germany where, for economic and demographic reasons, female participation in the overall workforce was far higher than in West Germany.

The light bulb plant was only a few steps from the (at this stage still porous) border with West Berlin.

As a union activist within the plant she campaigned powerfully, both against the endless bureaucratic restrictions on how workers might benefit from the potential economic opportunities this presented by the border, and against workplace gender discrimination.

She then worked and 1959/60 as a teaching assistant at the "Bruno Leuschner" Economics Academy in Berlin-Karlshorst which gave her the opportunity to take an academic approach to analysing women's social position.

During the early 1960s she was able, as a post-graduate student to resume her association with the Humboldt.

She received her doctorate, for which she was supervised by, in 1965.

Her dissertation was entitled "Some of the philosophical-ethical problems in determining the role of women in society and applying equal rights" ("Einige philosophisch-ethische Probleme bei der Bestimmung der gesellschaftlichen Rolle der Frau und der Durchsetzung ihrer Gleichberechtigung").

It was later published as a book, with the snappier title "Woman as a person" ("Die Frau als Persönlichkeit").

The book was officially tolerated, but largely ignored.

Between 1965 and 1969 she served as honorary (i.e. unpaid) of the Women's Commission on Trades Union Research at the Humboldt.

Additionally, during the early 1970s she was a member of the working group on "Problems of biological, psychological and social personality determination" with the East German Academy of Pedagogical Sciences.

She had already, in 1971, initiated the creation of the Department for Ethics as a division of the university's Section for Marxist–Leninist Philosophy.

Her habilitation (higher qualification) followed in 1974, setting her on course for an academic career.

The theme of her work this time was "Personality, Morality and Ethical Education" ("Persönlichkeit, Moral und sittliche Erziehung").

She was now appointed to a full professorship for Ethics at the Humboldt.

She later took over from Anneliese Griese, serving as Head of the Philosophy section between March 1987 and January 1990.

Her successor in this position was Heinz Kuchling.

Between 1988 and 1990 she served as a member of the Philosophy Advisory Board and headed up the permanent "Ethics" working group at the East German Ministry for Higher and Vocational Education.

As a member of the (East) German Academy of Sciences she served on various advisory bodies including the one on "Women in Socialist Society".

On the international stage Hörz served as a deputy council member with the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF), participating in its congresses at Helsinki, Berlin, Prague and Moscow and numerous international consultations and seminars, also taking part in a National Women's Conference in Bangladesh.

She was involved in setting up consultative meetings and expert advice in the context of collaboration between the WIDF and the United Nations, also for many years representing East Germany in the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

Political developments during 1989 and the realisation after November of that year that the Soviet forces had no orders to the crush street protests violently, as they had in 1953 opened the way to German reunification which followed, formally, in October 1990.

The East German style of Marxist philosophy was not a priority for the new Germany and Helga Hörz was persuaded to retire early, on health grounds at the prompting of East Germany's last Minister for Education, Hans Joachim Meyer.

Before 1990 she was a university teacher of Ethics in the Philosophy Department at the Humboldt University in (East) Berlin.

She was persuaded to retire on health grounds in October 1990, but in the words of one headline writer slightly less than twenty years later, this has left her "winding down, but not muzzled" ("Abgewickelt, aber nicht mundtot").

Helga Erika Ivertowski was born, the younger of the two daughters of Paul and Maria Ivertowski, in Danzig.

Her father worked on the docks as a crane operator.

The marriage would produce three recorded children and seven grandchildren (February 2010).