Margarete Köstlin-Räntsch

Margarete Köstlin-Räntsch

Margarete Köstlin-Räntsch (born as Margarethe Agnes Elise Räntsch ; born November 18, 1880 in Berlin , † summer 1945 in Wargenau , East Prussia ) was one of the first women doctors in Germany. Their third child was the pilot and entrepreneur Beate Uhse .

family

Restoration “Schloss Schlachtensee” on a contemporary postcard from 1898, owned by Fritz Räntsch Erben

Margarete Räntsch was the daughter of the brewery director Friedrich "Fritz" Carl Leopold Räntsch (October 7, 1844 - October 26, 1891) and his wife Caroline Friederike, née Wilke. Born in a middle-class family - she was raised strictly but liberally - she learned to play the piano at an early age, which she knew how to master well. She had a younger brother, Fritz Gustav Paul, born on January 1, 1883. In the spring of 1886, the father married for the second time. The stepmother of the children was now Agnes, née Donner (born December 26, 1855). In the second marriage three more children were born, Carl Louis Adolf (born July 14, 1887), Elisabeth Maria Johanna (born March 13, 1890) and Waldemar (born January 12, 1892). The father died early at the age of 47 when Margarete was ten years old, a decisive experience in her childhood. A quarter of a year after the father's death, another baby was born: Waldemar, who died at the age of five and a half months.

Shortly before his death, his father had bought the “Restauration Auf dem Kynast”, a restaurant on the banks of the Schlachtensee , for 200,000 Mk . After extensive expansion, designed for 1,000 guests, he reopened it as “Schloss Schlachtensee”, adding ancillary buildings and terraces for 2,000 guests. After the father's death, the restaurant remained in the possession of the stepmother, who then gradually leased it to third parties, including her brother-in-law.

After completing her studies, Margarete Räntsch married the farmer Otto Köstlin (1871–1945) from Treherz in Württemberg in 1908 and settled with him in Quarnbek near Kiel . They had three children, Ulrich (* 1907), Elisabeth (* 1909) and Beate (* 1919). Margarete Köstlin-Räntsch was related to the Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht . Together with his wife Luise, he took over the sponsorship of the youngest daughter Beate. The children were brought up as equals and educated at an early age. The two daughters were allowed to do everything the son was allowed to do, while girls were subject to far more prohibitions and rules of behavior than boys in their social environment. The parents talked openly about sexuality with their three children, sending them to reform education schools such as the “ School by the Sea ” founded by Martin Luserke in 1925 on the North Sea island of Juist or the Odenwald School and abroad. Margarete Räntsch attached great importance to the fact that the girls, regardless of their later occupation or possible domestic workers, managed the household “ inside out ”. Only in this way are they the “soul of Janze” ( Berlin for: soul of the whole) and can organize everything perfectly.

In 1917 the young family acquired an estate of 1,800 acres (450 hectares ) in Wargenau (today: Malinowka ) near Cranz in East Prussia. The manor was in an extensive park, behind the house was a large garden with apple trees. From the time she moved to East Prussia, Margarete Köstlin-Räntsch was no longer gainfully employed. However, she did not want to give up medicine entirely and had mentioned this to her husband as a condition for marriage. Therefore, in addition to the entire commercial administration of the property, she also took on the medical care of her own family and the many estate employees, which included 24 families.

The manor house was equipped with electricity, telephone and flush toilets early on. When his son Ulrich studied law in Königsberg, he was allowed to invite as many fellow students to the estate as could be accommodated. When the Navy docked at Cranz, young naval officers always came to visit. Then the gramophone danced to shellac records. Margarete Köstlin-Räntsch and her husband allowed two young men to offer and carry out sightseeing flights over East Prussia from a harvested field of the property in 1932. During her school holidays, her youngest daughter, Beate, not only had the opportunity to take care of the pilots and to fly free of charge in a seat that had remained free. She also received the most intense incentive to turn her dream of flying, which she had been pursuing since the age of eight, into reality.

In the summer of 1945, the couple were murdered by Red Army soldiers in Wargenau . Their adult children didn't find out until years later.

School and education

Margarete Räntsch first attended a secondary school for girls, where she learned Latin and ancient Greek. Since there were no state-organized offers for girls to continue their school career up to the secondary school leaving certificate ( Abitur ), she took part in one of the privately financed high school courses led by Helene Lange after attending school . This enabled her to take the Matura examination at the Royal Luisengymnasium in Berlin in the summer of 1901 .

She decided to study human medicine and enrolled at the Albert Ludwig University in Freiburg. After the second semester, she moved to the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich for two more semesters and later to the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin, where she passed the preliminary medical examination at the end of the winter semester 1903/04. In order to be able to matriculate at the university in Würzburg, Margarete Räntsch first had to enroll as a guest student for two semesters. After all, she studied for four semesters at the Julius Maximilians University in Würzburg and, together with Grete Ehrenberg and Barbara Heffner, was one of the first three students at this university. In the winter of 1906 she passed the medical examination there. She received her license to practice medicine on December 21, 1906.

At the beginning of January 1907 she was admitted to the practical year. Räntsch is the first woman whose dissertation was admitted to the medical faculty of the University of Würzburg in November / December 1907. In 1908 she completed her studies with a doctorate under Karl Bernhard Lehmann . Her dissertation is entitled “Investigations into the smoothness of clothing fabrics”.

job

Margarete Räntsch settled as a doctor in Quarnbek near Kiel in 1908. Later she worked until around 1917 in the Heinrich Children's Hospital (Hei-Ki-Ho) in Kiel at Lorentzendamm 8/10 (today: Kiel University Children's Hospital), to which she traveled around 25 kilometers in the morning and in the evening by horse and Had to move the car.

Honor

Margarete Räntsch is honored with a plaque in the city of Würzburg.

literature

• Gudrun Gloth: I thought that was my end ... Herbig, Munich 2015. ISBN 978-3-7766-2769-5 .
• Dana Horáková: Strong women. Adored, loved, demonized. Quadriga, Berlin 2011. ISBN 978-3-86995-016-7 .
• Gisela Kaiser: Searching for traces. Students and scientists at the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg from the beginning until today. Schimmel, Würzburg 1995.
• Beate Uhse: With lust and love, my life. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1989. ISBN 978-3-550-06429-6 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfgang Ellerbrock: Monks, fishermen and citizens: 100 years of the Schlachtensee country house colony. Home and social history sketches, Berlin 1995, p. 73. ISBN 978-3-927708-12-9 .
2. ^ Teltower Kreisblatt dated June 8, 1889
3. ^ Teltower Kreisblatt dated May 24, 1890
4. ^ Maria Köstlin: The book of the Köstlin family . Kohlhammer. Stuttgart, 1931.
5. ↑ Beate Uhse: With lust and love. My life . Ullstein. Frankfurt am Main / Berlin, 1989. p. 43. ISBN 3-550-06429-2 .
6. ↑ Beate Uhse ( Memento of the original from March 31, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , at: famous-people.de, accessed on March 31, 2016 
7. ↑ Gudrun Gloth: I thought that was my end ... Herbig, Munich 2015. See the chapter on Beate Uhse. ISBN 978-3-7766-2769-5 .
8. ^ Dana Horáková: Strong women. Adored, loved, demonized. Quadriga, Berlin 2011. p. 226. ISBN 978-3-86995-016-7 .
9. ↑ Margarete Köstlin-Räntsch, b. Räntsch , at: charite.de, accessed on March 31, 2016
10. ↑ Beate Uhse: With lust and love. My life . Ullstein. Frankfurt am Main / Berlin, 1989. pp. 44-45. ISBN 3-550-06429-2 .
11. ↑ Gudrun Gloth: I thought that was my end ... Herbig, Munich 2015. See the chapter on Beate Uhse. ISBN 978-3-7766-2769-5 .
12. ↑ Beate Uhse-Köstlin , on: kulturzentrum-ostpreussen.de, accessed on March 31, 2016
13. ^ Gertrud Bäumer: History of the high school courses for women in Berlin. Berlin 1906, p. 80
14. ↑ 110 Years of Studies for Women ( Memento of the original from August 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Economy in Mainfranken. The regional magazine . Chamber of Commerce and Industry Würzburg - Schweinfurt. Edition 11/2013, p. 18 
15. ↑ Emancipation in the classroom . In: MainEcho from September 18, 2013, at: main-echo.de, accessed on March 31, 2016
16. ↑ Michael Andreas Gemkow: Doctors and students in the Munich Medical Weekly (Medical Intelligence Journal): 1870-1914. Diss. Med. Münster 1991, pp. 158, 338
17. ↑ Gisela Kaiser: Search for traces. Students and scientists at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg from the beginning until today. Schimmel, Würzburg 1995.
18. ^ Annual directory of the papers published at German universities 1907/08. Munich Medical Weekly, Munich 1908, p. 194
19. ↑ Beate Uhse: With lust and love, my life. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1989, pp. 32, 37. ISBN 978-3-550-06429-6 .
20. ↑ Memorial plaque for scholars . In: MainEcho from October 8, 2015, at: main-echo.de, accessed on March 31, 2016