1990 was the year in which, for rather less than a year, she became an important Social Democratic participant in the national politics of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). National elections in the GDR had traditionally operated according to a single list system which offered the voters only one list of (carefully preselected) candidates. Anyone wishing to vote against the list could do so by placing the ballot paper in a separate ballot box while the officials looked on: few did. But on 18 March 1990 the German Democratic Republic conducted its first (and as matters turned out, last) democratically configured general election. The Social Democrats took 21.9% of the vote which entitled them to 88 seats in the country's first freely elected National legislative assembly ("Volkskammer"). One of the seats went to Hildebrand, representing the Berlin electoral district. She also joined the coalition government of Lothar de Maizière, serving between April and August 1990 as the East German Minister for Labour and Social Affairs.