Regine Hildebrandt (née Radischewski; 26 April 1941 – 26 November 2001) was a German biologist and politician (Social Democratic Party of Germany).
Life
Early years
Wartime in Germany
Regine Radischewski was born in Berlin during the war, the second of her parents' two recorded children.
Her mother would later own a small tobacconist shop.
thumb|right|Regine Hildebrandt at SPD-convention in Nuremberg in November 2001, a few days before her death.
Growing up
The war ended in May 1945 and the family ended up back in Berlin. For the first five or six years of her schooling she attended a school in a western occupation zone of the city ("West Berlin"), but as the political division between the Soviet occupation zone and the western occupation zones became more stark and, it seemed, more permanent, her parents opted on her behalf for a school in the Soviet zone in what had by now become known as East Berlin. The family home was in the city centre along Bernauer Straße ("Bernau Street") which formed the (initially hard to spot) political border between East Berlin and West Berlin, and afforded Regine a ring-side seat in the cold wall drama until September 1961 when the family were forcibly relocated in connection with the building of the Berlin Wall.
Middle years
The student
From 1959 to 1964, she studied biology at the Humboldt University in East Berlin.
She had never joined the Free German Youth (FDJ/Freie Deutsche Jugend), which was in effect the youth wing of the young country's ruling SED party. Her failure to join seems to have been a result of timetable clashes involving her commitment to singing in the church choir. During this period she had numerous research papers published.
A political decision had been taken to convert East German currency into western Marks at a one-for one rate (except in respect of very large amounts), and Hildebrandt's priority as a government minister was tackling growing unemployment in east Germany, and minister-president Manfred Stolpe prepared to form a "grand coalition" with the centre-right CDU party. Hildebrand was already seriously ill and had strongly campaigned for an alternative alliance, with the left-wing PDS.
The Hildebrandts and the state prime minister Manfred Stolpe had known one another since the 1960s through their church connections, though they had not been aware at every level of Stolpe's complicated and possibly at times collaborative relationship with the Ministry for State Security during the years of the dictatorship. After her resignation from the government Hildebrand and Stolpe would continue to treasure one another's friendship, and remain political allies, until Hildebrandt's death in 2001.