In 1945 she joined the Communist Party (KPD), and in April 1946 she was among the thousands of communists who lost no time in signing their party membership across to the new &lt;a href="Socialist%20Unity%20Party%20of%20Germany"&gt;Socialist Unity Party ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" / SED)&lt;/a&gt;, which by October 1949 would have become the ruling party in a new kind of German one-party dictatorship. Between 1946 and 1948 she also represented the KPD/SED party on the . In 1948 she was dismissed from her position at the . The division of Berlin into military occupation zones agreed in 1945 was by now acquiring a level of permanence that few would have anticipated three years earlier, and she now relocated from the American occupation zone to the Soviet occupation zone, taking a post as a senior internist at the Charité (hospital). Her move was attributed, by the West German pro-Western news magazine, Der Spiegel, to "Communist activities" ("Wegen Kommunistischer Umtriebe").