Katharina "Käthe" Kern (22 July 1900 - 16 April 1985) became a German anti-government activist during the Hitler years. After 1945 she quickly emerged as a senior politician and party loyalist in the Soviet occupation zone (after October 1949 &lt;a href="German%20Democratic%20Republic"&gt;the German Democratic Republic / East Germany&lt;/a&gt;). She served between 1946 and 1985 as a member of what became the powerful Party Central Committee. A long-standing leading figure in the , she also served, between 1949 and 1970, as head of the national "Mother and Child department" ("Hauptabteilung Mutter und Kind").