Marlies Deneke (born Marlies Kilian: 23 December 1953) is a German politician ( SED /

PDS PD, P.D., or Pd may refer to: Arts and media * ''People's Democracy'' (newspaper), weekly organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) * ''The Plain Dealer'', a Cleveland, Ohio, US newspaper * Post Diaspora, a time frame in the '' Honorverse' ...

). She sat as a member of the East German national parliament (''Volkskammer'') between March and October 1990, and then of the post-reunification Bundestag. During and after the final months of the German Democratic Republic she was a member of the party leadership team trying to navigate the transformation of the Socialist Unity Party (''Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands''/ SED) from a position of dominance in the East German one-party state to its new role as the Party of Democratic Socialism (''Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus'' / PDS), an alternative left wing grouping operating in the multi-party context of a newly reunified Germany.

Life

Marlies Kilian was born into a working-class family in Magdeburg. She attended

secondary school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' secondary education, lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) ...

between 1960 and 1970, like most contemporaries becoming a member, in 1967, of the Free German Youth (''Freie Deutsche Jugend'' / FDJ) organisation, which was in effect the youth wing of the ruling SED (party). She joined the Trades Union Federation (''Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund'' / FDGB) in 1970, undertaking an apprenticeship in merchandising between 1970 and 1972. She then took a job locally with the East German Trade Organisation (''Handelsorganisation'') which was concerned with the provision of daily necessities in Magdeburg. She was promoted to the position of "Deputy Operations Director" (''"stellvertretende Betriebsdirektorin"'') in 1977. In 1979 she became a member of the ruling SED. In 1980 she embarked on a distance learning degree course with the Dresden Academy for Economics, which led in 1985 to a qualification in economics. Between 1982 and 1988 she served as chair of the Trades Union leadership, and from 1988 till 1989 as SED Party Secretary within the " Handelsorganisation" in Magdeburg where she worked. On 9 December 1989 Marlies Deneke was elected to the executive committee and the presidium of the newly launched Party of Democratic Socialism. Between January and March 1990 she participated in the

Round Table The Round Table ( cy, y Ford Gron; kw, an Moos Krenn; br, an Daol Grenn; la, Mensa Rotunda) is King Arthur's famed table in the Arthurian legend, around which he and his knights congregate. As its name suggests, it has no head, implying that e ...

forum in Berlin. In June 1990 Deneke and

André Brie André Brie (born 13 March 1950 in Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) is a German politician and from 1999 to 2009 Member of the European Parliament for the Party of Democratic Socialism, part of the European Left and sits on the European Parliam ...

were elected as the deputy chairpersons of the PDS. The first (and, as matters turned out, last) democratically configured

general election A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...

in the German Democratic Republic took place on 18 March 1990. The PDS won only 66 of the 400 seats in the new "Volkskammer", but Deneke's name was nevertheless high enough up on the party list to ensure her inclusion. She was also one of the 24 PDS members who transferred across to the new Bundestag in October 1990 under the terms of the

unification treaty Unification or unification theory may refer to: Computer science * Unification (computer science), the act of identifying two terms with a suitable substitution * Graph theory#Subsumption and unification, Unification (graph theory), the comput ...

concluded the previous month. However, she was no longer a member after the election in December 1990. She was re-elected to the PDS deputy chairmanship in January 1991 retaining both the position and a high party profile till December 1991. Neue Zeit, 16 December 1991 Marlies Deneke continued to undertake support work for the

group in the Bundestag for some time, but she resigned from the party in 2002.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Deneke, Marlies 1953 births Living people Politicians from Magdeburg People from Bezirk Magdeburg Socialist Unity Party of Germany members Party of Democratic Socialism (Germany) politicians Members of the Bundestag for the Party of Democratic Socialism (Germany) Members of the 10th Volkskammer Members of the Bundestag for Saxony-Anhalt Members of the Bundestag 1987–1990 Female members of the Volkskammer Female members of the Bundestag Free German Youth members Free German Trade Union Federation members 21st-century German women politicians