Bruni de la Motte, a journalist and former East German academic who became a national officer for the public service union Unison, has died aged 74. She was known for her work reporting on UK social and political life for German-language newspapers, including in-depth interviews with Tony Benn and Harold Pinter for Neues Deutschland, and for writing about her experiences in the former German Democratic Republic for the Guardian and the New Statesman.
Born in a small village in Thuringia, she was the daughter of Eva and Ernst de la Motte. She studied English at Potsdam University, where she was taught by Marguerite Morgan and mentored by Professor Leonard Goldstein, a refugee from McCarthyism in the United States. After completing her doctorate in 1974, she taught English literature at Potsdam and published papers on feminism as reflected through 19th-century English women writers.
She met her future husband in 1985 at a Shakespeare conference in Weimar, and they married in 1989, just before the fall of the GDR. She moved to London with her two sons from a previous marriage, and later gave interviews and co-authored a book on the history of the GDR, titled Stasi State or Socialist Paradise? The German Democratic Republic and What Became of It.
In 1990, she changed careers and joined Unison, where she progressed from secretary to national officer in the education sector. After retiring in 2016, she became a trustee of the Marx Memorial Library and an avid gardener. She was remembered for her vibrant clothing and love of bright colours.
She is survived by her husband, two sons, two grandchildren, three siblings, and her father.
