Following the blockade of West Berlin in 1949 and the uncompromising suppression of the East German uprising in 1953, cold war tensions between the two German states intensified, and in August 1956 the Communist Party of Germany was outlawed by the West Germany constitutional court. Over the next decade, however, the relations between East and West Germany became less antagonistic, in 1968 a new version of the former party was launched as the &lt;a href="German%20Communist%20Party"&gt;German Communist Party ( "Deutsche Kommunistische Partei" / DKP)&lt;/a&gt;, notionally as "an entirely new party". Hanna Rautenbach was by now aged 79 and no longer politically or professionally active. Nevertheless, she lost no time in joining the "new" DKP.