Renate Riemeck

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Renate Katharina Riemeck (born October 4, 1920 in Breslau ; † May 12, 2003 in Alsbach ) was a German historian and peace activist .

Renate Riemeck (right) with Nobel Prize winners Linus Pauling and Ava Helen Pauling on September 26, 1958 at an anti-war event in the Essen-Steele building

Life

Renate Riemeck grew up in Breslau, Stettin and Jena as the child of wealthy parents; the mother was a successful and respected businesswoman. Riemeck attended, among other things, a monastery school. As a young person, she was already committed to church criticism, especially with regard to Catholicism, and joined the anthroposophically oriented Christian community, which was banned from 1941 . Nevertheless, as Jutta Ditfurth discovered in 2007, on July 6, 1941, she applied for membership of the NSDAP , which was granted on October 3, 1941 (membership number 8915151). Riemeck had denied this all of her life, including in her 1992 autobiography Ich bin ein Mensch für mich .

She studied history, German and art history for seven semesters in Munich and especially in Jena; in March 1943 she received her doctorate. phil. about late medieval heretic movements . In it, as critics later found, she presented the pogroms against Jews in the 14th century as a “justified protest”. Despite this degree, she is said to have joined the National Socialist Students' Association in mid-1943 . Her academic teachers also included the Nazi racial propagandists Karl Astel and Hans FK Günther .

In Jena she became friends with the widowed Ingeborg Meinhof , mother of the later concrete columnist and co-founder of the Red Army parliamentary group , Ulrike Meinhof . Riemeck soon moved into a common household with her fellow student and later partner Ingeborg. Both were assistants to Johann von Leers , holder of the chair for "German legal, economic and political history on a racial basis" at the University of Jena , an SS-Obersturmbannführer who tried to justify anti-Semitism "scientifically".

After the war, Riemeck became a lecturer in teacher training in Oldenburg , where she moved with Ingeborg and the children. She saw anti-fascist schooling, especially for elementary school students, as an important form of political action; she wrote the first new school books during the occupation . In 1949, after Ingeborg's death, she received guardianship for the two daughters Wienke (* 1931) and Ulrike (* 1934), whom she looked after and raised together with Holde Bischoff. Later she taught in Braunschweig and Weilburg .

She had been a member of the SPD since 1946 and fought against rearmament and conscription. In 1955 she was appointed as the youngest West German professor at the University of Education in Wuppertal , where she taught history and political education. Since about 1958 an active member of the International of War Resisters (IDK), she became its chairman in 1960. She was involved in the campaign “ Kampf dem Atomtod ”, formulated the “Appeal of the 44” in 1958, with which 44 university lecturers called on the trade unions to resist nuclear armament, and in 1960 was one of the founding members of the German Peace Union (DFU) as its top candidate she appeared reluctantly in the 1961 federal election campaign. In this context she was criticized as politically naive because of her affinity to organizations close to the regime in the GDR and the Eastern Bloc , as the SED state financially supported various publication organs and groups in the West, for which Renate Riemeck worked temporarily.

In 1960, Minister of Education, Werner Schütz, revoked her academic examination authorization, despite major protests from university circles. In this context, on July 16, 1960, the first sit-in strike by students in Germany took place in front of the Düsseldorf Ministry of Culture . In order to avoid the impending disciplinary proceedings, Riemeck subsequently withdrew from civil service. In 1961 she suffered from right-sided paralysis, which affected her for years.

For a long time, in line with her pacifist stance , she wrote B. for the Deutsche Volkszeitung and the BK -Zeitschrift The Voice of the Congregation , took part in peace policy conferences in East Berlin and Prague and worked increasingly in the anthroposophical environment on book publications on historical topics. In 1964 she left the DFU, but took part in numerous rallies until the 1970s. B. against nuclear armament as an independent speaker.

In 1971, she specifically warned in the magazine (“Give up, Ulrike!”) To end the armed struggle in the RAF, but without condemning the original motives of her beloved foster daughter: “You should try to take advantage of the chances of Federal Republican urban guerrillas to measure the social reality of this country ”.

In 1979 she received a teaching position in the pedagogy department at the University of Marburg . In 1980, Rolf Hochhuth gave her the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis in order to support her financially. Until recently she worked as a journalist and historical researcher, in the last few years withdrawn due to illness in Alsbach, Hesse.

Publications (selection)

  • The late medieval flagellants of Thuringia and the German flagellant movements. A contribution to the history of German heresy . Dissertation Jena 1943, OCLC 633134830 .
  • as publisher: Friedrich Schlegel , Vom romantischen Geist. Selected essays. Wedel 1946 (= master of the small form. Volume 1).
  • Helferich Peter Sturz . On the way to classic form. Edited by Renate Riemeck. Alster Verlag Curt Brauns, Wedel 1948
  • Friends and helpers of humanity (with Ingeborg Meinhof). 3 booklets, Oldenburg publishing house, Oldenburg 1949/1950
  • Small history atlas . Oldenburg publishing house, Oldenburg 1950
  • History at a glance (as editor). 4 episodes, Oldenburger Verlagshaus, Oldenburg 1950/51
  • Together - for one another . A reading and work book on social studies for Hessian schools (with Otto Seitzer). Klett, Stuttgart 1956
  • Turning point. Europe and the world since 1945 . Stalling , Oldenburg 1957
  • Story for the youth . 4 volumes, Mundus, Stuttgart 1959/1960
  • Moscow and the Vatican . 2 volumes, voice, Frankfurt am Main 1964/65; 3rd ext. A. (in one volume): Die Pforte, Basel 1988, ISBN 3-85636-052-2
  • Central Europe. Balance of a century . Die Kommenden, Freiburg im Breisgau 1965; 5. A. Engel, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-927118-14-1
  • Jan Hus . Reformation 100 years before Luther . Voice, Frankfurt 1966
  • When the hour struck, in Heinrich Fink , ed .: Stronger than fear. The six million who couldn't find a savior. Union, Berlin 1968, pp. 71-75
  • The other Comenius . Bohemian Brethren Bishop, humanist and educator . Voice, Frankfurt am Main 1970
  • Examples of Goethean thought. Man as a spiritual being . Die Pforte, Basel 1974
  • Faith - dogma - power. History of the Councils . Urachhaus , Stuttgart 1985
  • Outlawed - ostracized - burned. 12 heretic fates from eight centuries . Urachhaus, Stuttgart 1986
  • 1789. Heroic awakening and reign of terror . Urachhaus, Stuttgart 1988
  • I am a person to myself. From an uncomfortable life . Urachhaus, Stuttgart 1992; 2nd A. 1994
  • Rosalia and her descendants. East German past in life pictures . Mayer, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-932386-03-5
  • Classics of education from Comenius to Reichwein. Marburg summer lectures 1981/1982/1983 with source texts. Edited by Hans Christoph Berg , Bodo Hildebrand, Frauke Stübig and Heinz Stübig , Tectum-Verlag, Marburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-8288-3431-6 .

Literature / sources

  • Roswitha von dem Borne: "From an uncomfortable life". On the death of Renate Riemeck, in: Die Drei. Journal for Anthroposophy in Science, Kubst and Social Life, vol. 2003. Issue 7, pp. 78–81
  • Bernd Mansel: Your political career was rather short, in: Freitag. The East-West weekly newspaper from May 23, 2003
  • Dirk Mellies: Trojan horses of the GDR? The neutralist-pacifist network of the early Federal Republic and the Deutsche Volkszeitung 1953–1973 . Peter Lang, Frankfurt 2006, ISBN 3-631-55825-2
  • Alois Prinz: Better angry than sad. The life story of Ulrike Marie Meinhof, Weinheim and Basel 2003
  • Bettina Röhl : This is how communism is fun. Ulrike Meinhof, Klaus Rainer Röhl and the Konkret files . European Publishing House , Hamburg 2006 ISBN 3-434-50600-4
  • Renate Riemeck: "I have lived many lives too" . Short biography, with Ingeborg Nödinger, in We Women. Published by the Association for the Promotion of Women's Journalism, issue 3, Düsseldorf 2003 ISSN  0178-6083 p. 5
  • Interview by Alice Schwarzer with Renate Riemeck, in: EMMA , September 1, 1989
  • Alice Schwarzer on Ulrike Meinhof, in: EMMA, July / August 2006
  • Peter Mosler: What we wanted, what we became . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1977, Chapter 11, pp. 170-175

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jutta Ditfurth: Ulrike Meinhof. The biography. Ullstein, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-550-08728-8 , pp. 37-40
  2. ↑ p. 80: "Although I was not in the NS student union and certainly not in the NSDAP (...)"
  3. ↑ Jörg Feuchter, Die Ketzerin, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , January 31, 2018, p. N3.
  4. ↑ Jutta Ditfurth, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung November 25, 2007 online
  5. ↑ Willi Winkler: Ulrike Meinhof: Tragic, Self-Righteous, Murderous , Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 17, 2010
  6. ↑ According to Riemeck, Ich bin ein Mensch für mich , pp. 179ff
  7. ↑ This publisher's name was for a time the cover name of the Stalling Verlag, which was all too well known in the region because of its Nazi publications and its incitement to war. Later the old name could be taken up again and suitable staff could be employed, see the note on "Turn of the century". There are publishing products from these years 1948–1949 with both names in one line, from which the identity results
  8. ↑ the publishing house was located in the extreme right spectrum and after 1945 employed Hans Rößner , Wilhelm Spengler and Hans Ernst Schneider, among others
  9. ↑ The essay is about her school days in Stettin and the hiding of Jews after the Reichspogromnacht by acquaintances. In the unpaginated part of the picture in the appendix, undated: Riemeck in conversation with Emil Fuchs , after 1945
personal data
SURNAME Riemeck, Renate
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Riemeck, Renate Katharina (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian and peace activist
DATE OF BIRTH 4th October 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH May 12, 2003
Place of death Alsbach