Helga Hörz

As soon as East Germany ceased to exist as a separate state, which happened early in October 1990, Helga Hörz's role as an East German delegate at the United Nations meetings on women's issues came to an end.

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. The world of East German philosophical did not so instantly cease to exist, however, and Hörz became the honorary (unpaid) leader for a series of events in the Berlin "Socio-cultural Contact Centre for Senior citizens" between 1992 and December 1994 and, from 1997, an advisory board member for the "Training Academy of the Berlin Regional Association for People's Solidarity". Between 1997 and 2011 she served for fifteen years as chair of the advisory board, responsible for organising academic presentations, reading sessions with authors and computer courses.

In 1975 Helga Hörz was elected to membership of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women by the UN Economic and Social Council. She was involved in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and introduced in 1979 a declaration "on the stronger inclusion of women in the fight for peace" which was adopted by the General Assembly in 1982 and, it has been suggested, incorporated in UN Resolution 1325.

Hörz participated in UN World Women's Conference (Copenhagen, Nairobi) and UN seminars (Groningen, Geneva, Vienna, Paris). She addressed gender problems in 1975 in London, at the 1977 UN seminar in Groningen and at the 1979 ECE "Time Management" seminar in Geneva. Within the UN she served as vice-chair for UN Commission day-sessions "On the status of women" in Vienna (1978) and New York (1979 and 1980). In March 1980, and again in 1990, she chaired a Vienna day session, and at the second UN World Women's Conference at Copenhagen in July 1980 she was first vice-chair "in charge of coordination".

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

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. 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".

She received her doctorate, for which she was supervised by Hermann Ley [de], 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. 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").

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 grew up and completed her schooling in Nauen. 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 Herbert Hörz [de]. The marriage would produce three recorded children and seven grandchildren (February 2010).

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. 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. 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. 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.

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