Katja Havemann
Katja Havemann (born Annedore Grafe: 30 November 1947) is a German civil rights activist and author. Early life Annedore Grafe was born into a peasant family in Neubarnim (Letschin) in a rural region on the left bank of the Oder river, at that time part of the Soviet occupation zone, and on the "German" side of the newly repositioned frontier with Poland. She attended the local school between 1954 and 1964, and then undertook a traineeship in animal husbandry, till 1967 at the agriculture college in Neuenhagen a short distance to the east of Berlin. In 1967 she moved on to the prestigious "Bruno Leuschner" Economic Academy in Berlin. However, after a year she voluntarily abandoned her course and in 1968 took work at a Berlin orphanage. Marriage, early career In 1973 she successfully completed a training as a home educationist in Hohenprießnitz (near Leipzig). By this time, back in Berlin, she had become part of a circle of intellectuals – artists and writers – critical of the ruling party. She first met the scientist and high-profile political and civil rights activist Robert Havemann (1910–1982) in 1970 at the apartment of the songwriter Wolf Biermann, another prominent political dissident. She