Carola Stern

Carola Stern (born Erika Assmus in 1925 on the island of Usedom; died in Berlin in 2006) was a German writer and political journalist. After working as a teacher in East Germany, she studied at the Free University of Berlin in the 1950s and became a research assistant at its Institute of Political Science. From 1960 to 1970, she headed the political editorial department at Kiepenheuer & Witsch; she then worked as an editor and commentator at Westdeutscher Rundfunk until 1985. Stern wrote biographies of, among others, Dorothea Schlegel, Rahel Varnhagen, Fritzi Massary, and Johanna Schopenhauer, as well as the autobiographies In den Netzen der Erinnerung and Doppelleben. Her honors included the Jacob Kaiser Prize and the Carl von Ossietzky Medal. From 1987, she served as vice president of the German PEN Centre.