Margarete Wittkowski returned to Berlin in June 1946.[1] The region surrounding the city was now administered as the Soviet occupation zone, although the contentious creation of the Socialist Unity Party ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" / SED) a couple of months earlier had already created a necessary precondition for its relaunch in October 1949 as a new kind of one-party dictatorship, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Wittkowski joined the SED in 1946.[2] Jürgen Kuczynski was already back in town, and together they founded a weekly newspaper called "Die Wirtschaft" ("The Economy").[2] She also took charge of the economics section of Neues Deutschland, the newly established mass-circulation daily newspaper of the recently established Socialist Unity Party.[3] Sources nevertheless indicate that Wittkowski objected to being given work as a journalist because she wished to contribute more directly to rebuilding the country.[3]