Ilse Rodenberg

Ilse Rodenberg was a Hamburg typist who became an actress and, later, an influential East German theatre director. She combined this with a political career, sitting as a member of the East German parliament for four decades between 1950 and 1990. She was a member not of the ruling SED (party) but of the National Democratic Party of Germany, one of the smaller Block Parties which contributed a semblance of pluralism to the country's political structure.