Anita was born on the 5th day of November 1923 to Elly and Willy
Schroeder.
She went to High school in Pankow (Berlin)
and then to a trade school, the Gauss School where she learned
technical
drawing and graduated as a laboratory technician. During the war all
German
teens had to do a year of service (Pflichtjahr) and Anita did her year
as an au pair for the family of an SS bodyguard of Hitler. The man was
away on duty most of the time and the wife treated Anita rather
shabbily
and at one point hit her in the face. Anita threatened to sue and,
because
the woman had been listening to French radio stations (illegal at that
time), she did not contest the suit. Anita then worked as a laboratory
assistant in a ceramic factory where attempts were made to build
traveling
wave tubes. There she met, and became the mistress of, Peter Paul
Eickmeyer,
a minor painter, about 25 years her senior. Peter had a son of Anita's
age and a wife with breast cancer. Pankow was occupied by the Soviets
and
after the war she worked first as a grade school teacher
(Neu-Lehrerin).
Through Peter, who had been in an underground communist cell during the
war, she met the
German
writer Duschinsky, who arranged for her to take over the East German
News
Agency's bureau in Nueremberg. Because her unsatisfactory personal life
and the prospect of adventure she was happy to take that opportunity.
On
her second or third day on the job she met me in the court
room where the general staff of High Command of the German Army
(Generals
Halder, , Keitel et al.) were on trial.
